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Phoenix666 writes:

There's plenty of interesting work going on trying to make large trucks more fuel efficient. One such example is the company Wrightspeed, which has been building range-extended electric powertrains that companies like Fedex can use to completely replace the conventional internal combustion bits on their existing trucks.

"[They have] all the things you need to make the vehicle go," Ian Wright told Ars. Wright is one of the original founders of Tesla but more recently has been focusing his attention on bigger vehicles, "since they burn so much fuel."

Wrightspeed's powertrain consists of electric motors (one for each drive wheel) powered by a battery pack, which can either be plugged in and charged from the grid or by the range-extender, a turbine capable of running on number of different liquid fuels. This replaces the diesel engine, transmission, propshaft, and differentials one might normally expect to find in something like a delivery truck.

Clean delivery trucks will be a major boon for urban air quality. The Bronx, for example, has one of the nation's highest rates of asthma, which many attribute to the semi traffic crossing the borough on the Cross Bronx Expressway.