I’ve been saying for years that what makes battery electric trucks such a good option is their simplicity. I got confirmation on that from an unlikely place.
I was invited to witness the on-track competition portion of the Shell Eco-marathon. For the past four decades, Shell has been conducting the Eco-marathon at locations across the world. This year, the North American Mileage Challenge took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Teams of competitors design, build, and drive their prototype vehicles to see who can get the best MPG over a fixed number of laps. The vehicles could be powered by gasoline, batteries, or a hydrogen fuel cell. Think of this as the Messy Middle of the Eco-marathon.
This year’s winner of the on-track challenge was a team from Brigham Young University that designed a vehicle that achieved 2,144.9 MPG. Think about that, and yes, it is not a typo! That is like driving Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica on a single gallon of gas.
And while that was an amazing feat, and I was impressed by the creativity and boldness of all the student teams that participated, it was a conversation I had with one of the key leaders of the competition that really struck me as relevant.
The Shell person leading a tour of the operations asked me what I was most interested in, and I told him I was most excited about battery-electric vehicles. He was less than impressed and, in fact, said he did not think BEVs belonged in this engineering competition because they were too simple. In other words, they did not present enough of a challenge to engineers.
And while engineers might love a challenge, I suspect fleets prefer simplicity.
That is why I think batteries will ultimately be the powertrain of choice for the trucking industry. Fleets want something that works every day, is reliable, and performs, so simple seems to me to be the best option.
I have been saying for years that the simplicity of the battery electric architecture is its beauty. And I believe that when the trucking industry finally figures that out—that it is going to be easier to design, test, build, sell, and operate—they will embrace the simplicity. There is no aftertreatment, fewer moving parts, and much less lubricant needed.
It was funny to me that this man, who focuses on bringing together the best students in the world for a competition designed to see how far we can travel using as little energy as possible, does not see BEVs as an elegant solution.
And while BEVs might be too simple for the Shell Eco-marathon, I don’t think they are too simple for the trucking industry. In fact, I think their simplicity is their superpower and why they will win out in the end.
