Silicon Valley Startup Aims to Make Trucks into Hybrids

Ian Wright designed what may be one of the coolest street-legal cars of all time: the electric X1 looked like a Formula 1 racecar and went from zero to 60 in a breathtaking 2.9 seconds. Now, though, all Wright wants to talk about is trucks, especially the workaday delivery trucks and garbage trucks that ply city streets.

Why the excitement? Wright is the founder of Wrightspeed, a San Jose, CA-based startup that’s designed electric powertrains for medium- and heavy-duty trucks. “Garbage trucks are the perfect driving cycle for us: they get two or three miles per gallon, drive 130 miles a day with 1,000 hard stops that chew on the brakes. They’re just perfect,” he says.

Wright was among the founders of Tesla Motors. But despite his background in working on luxury performance cars, he’s come around to thinking that the biggest opportunity for electric vehicle disruption is where most of the fuel is burned—that is, big trucks. Cars may go through a few hundred gallons of gas a year but a commercial truck will burn through thousands of gallons or more. That means there’s a better financial incentive in terms of fuel savings to go electric.

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Walmart's Concept Semi Truck of the Future

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US Army Looking to Replace Medium Trucks by mid 2020s

In the next few years, the Army may be ramping up new-start programs for a medium truck as well as a boat designed to transport supplies on inland waterways.

The currently unnamed medium truck, which would be created jointly with the Marine Corps, could be fielded in the mid-2020s, said Kevin Fahey, the Army’s program executive officer for combat support and combat service support.

“We're already working with the Sustainment Center of Excellence and the [research and development] centers, both Army and Marine Corps, because we need to right now start structuring a [medium truck] program like” the joint light tactical vehicle, he told reporters during a Feb. 19 media roundtable at the Association of the U.S. Army Winter Symposium and Exposition.

The new truck could take the place of the family of medium tactical vehicles, the palletized load system and the heavy expanded mobility tactical truck, he said.

A technology development phase could begin as early as 2018, he said.

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I sure hope they are going to make this optionally manned. The statement within the article they want to make it beefy like the JLTV and MRAP does not fill me with confidence.

Ford to Attempt to Sell All Aluminum F Series Pickup, Shave 750 lbs off Vehicle

There are beer cans, and then there are Humvees. Ford Motor Co. will take pains to show its new, aluminum F-150 pickup has more in common with combat vehicles.

Ford will introduce an aluminum F series -- its anticipated and high-stakes redesign of the top-selling pickup in history -- at next month's Detroit auto show, according to people familiar with Ford's plans.

The automaker has asked Alcoa Inc., which makes aluminum blast shields for battlefield-bound vehicles, to lend some of its military-grade metal for the automaker's display, said one of those people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are secret.

Ford's sales job will be considerable: The company is eager to demonstrate the toughness of aluminum, which is lighter than steel, to pickup buyers who've made F-150 the bedrock of its business.

Any snafus would weigh on earnings that Ford already is projecting will decline next year and add to the challenges facing Mark Fields, likely the company's next chief executive officer.

At last year's Detroit show, he pledged that Ford would take as much as 750 pounds (340 kilograms) out of its next- generation trucks to meet tightening fuel-economy regulations.

"This is already the most significant debut at the auto show," said Joe Langley, a production analyst for researcher IHS Automotive. "Everybody's going to be dissecting that thing for a long time, especially since Ford will be taking such a big gamble."

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