New Freightliner MT50e provides cheaper battery, slower charging

As different gamers within the electrical business area push for ever-bigger batteries and sooner cost timers, Freightliner goes the opposite method. It’s a daring transfer, and one that might repay.

Freightliner mother or father firm Daimler says buyer enter and information helped drive improvement of the brand new FCCC MT50e mannequin unveiled at Work Truck Week. That information, mixed with enter from utility corporations and charging producers, led them to take what many would possibly take into account a step backwards. A step in direction of smaller battery packs with shorter vary and the addition of slower, “Degree 2” residence charging.

“They needed to point out that the L2 charging choices means its simpler to cost these vans at residence,” defined Electrek’s personal Jameson Dow, after I requested why Freightliner had despatched me an image of their new field truck blasting right into a suburban residence. “Which is a fairly widespread use case, or so I’ve heard.”

I’ve some Matco and Snap-On reps in my contacts, so I reached out – and a minimum of one Matco man on the market positively drives his truck residence daily. In order that half, a minimum of, checks out.

As for the cheaper battery, that is sensible too. The brand new MT50e provides a GVWR of 23,000 lbs., a spread of as much as 180 miles on a single cost (greater than sufficient to cowl my Matco man), and a streamlined, built-in design with no discount in cargo capability in comparison with its diesel counterparts.

And, in fact, it does all that with zero tailpipe emissions.

Able to work

Along with a brand new, “fleet optimized” battery capability, the MT50e sports activities a new electrical export energy system from Odyne that replaces the normal ICE mills that energy utility our bodies, cellular catastrophe reduction “command facilities,” reefer items, and cellular medical items.

The MT50e is designed and constructed to the identical physique dimensions as gasoline and diesel MT chassis, that means {that a} fleet’s current our bodies can be utilized on the MT50e with few or no adjustments, making it that a lot simpler to combine them into current fleets. New driver security and ease of operation options courtesy of its normal OptiView built-in all-digital gauge show, DriveTech driver controls and a full suite of Roadwatch passive and lively driver security help programs.

Electrek’s Take

Eradicating surface-level carbon emissions from dense human populations is without doubt one of the best methods to cut back the damaging impacts of inner combustion on public well being. The truth that this new Freightliner does that, and permits its drivers to get their day’s work carried out and cost up with out forcing an additional journey to the depot is big.

My prediction: this one can be a winner.