World’s Largest Battery-Powered Truck Comes to U.S.
Smith Electric Vehicles to build electric trucks in Kansas City
Company officials at the UK-based Smith Electric Vehicles announced on Friday that they will begin manufacturing “The world’s largest battery-electric-powered truck” at a new plant in Kansas City, Missouri.
The battery-powered Newton will be the first vehicle to be produced at the new plant, but starting next year, the plant will manufacture an electric version of the new Transit Connect light-duty vehicle in collaboration with made by Ford Motor Co.
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The Newton cruises at a top speed of 50mph, carries payloads up to eight tons and can last up to 150 miles on a single charge. The Newton also has a wheelbase of 3.9 meters and a turning radius of 14.15 meters, allowing it to make tight turns and making it ideal for urban applications.
Available in a range of body styles to meet specific customer needs, the Newton can even be fully refrigerated.
According to manufacturers, the Newton is perfectly suited for “depot-based fleets, engaged in lower-mileage, multi-drop collection intra-city operations on congested roads.” In short, don’t expect these to be taking the place of 18-wheel tractor trailers, but do expect to see them being used as delivery vehicles, logistics vehicles in and around airports, and as service vehicles around town.
The Kansas City location was one of several vying for the new plant, but the $3 million in tax incentives for Smith from the state of Missouri helped seal the deal.
Company officials said the new facility would create 200 green collar jobs within three years, with the first round of new hires receiving a starting wage of $44,236 annually. The company hopes to begin rolling Newtowns out of the new Kansas City plant by the third quarter of 2009.
This helps to move us away from foreign oil - yay! but not from greenhouse emissions; it only space-shifts the pollution because most of our electricity is generated by burning coal. We also need domestically-produced renewably generated electricity, such as solar and wind, to re-charge these batteries!
Well, Kansas has plenty of wind, and Missouri just passed a renewables portfolio standard in November, so they are moving in the right direction.
My take is this: just because we haven’t transitioned off of coal and other fossil fuels, doesn’t mean we should be slowing down in developing these technologies. As we push these technologies forward, the infrastructure will hopefully catch up.
What Tim said.
And the new national renewables portfolio standard plus decoupling utilities profits like in California will have the whole country going to more renewables just as it did here in California.
These 2 pieces of legislation will likely pass with a stronger Senate Majority.
RPS was attempted 8 times since the Clinton administration but always filibustered by Republicans till this year.
Decoupling has been recently suggested in legislation by Rep Inslee, last year by Senator Clinton, and by President Obama etc. There is change afoot.
The grid will get greener. Gasoline will only get redder: ie more blood will have to be shed as the last drops get dug out from under the last few nations that have any left.
I hope that more and more vehicles begin to be ecological safe powered.
It is absolutely amazing to see the methods used to find something bad in everything.
Many goals are NOT instantaneously attainable, but require intermediate developments.
HOLLYWOOD IS WRONG. INSTANT GRATIFICATION EXISTS ONLY THERE.
Real life requires that steps be taken to advance humanity and to reach goals. The existence of a “proof of concept” does not mean that the product is ready to replace all existing technology.
You might want to have your Senators and Representative return the patent and copyright laws to their original form and repeal all changes that have been made since origination. The Constitution states that these laws are supposed to PROMOTE innovation. As now used they INHIBIT innovation.
Deborah has found a way to complain. Timothy has found that at least some of what is needed is being produced. The increased demand will promote “GREEN” additions that will eventually cut the human 5% contribution to green house gasses.
Perhaps, if we stop preventing it, we may find a way to capture the huge CO2 deposits below the oceans and to capture volcano eruptions as they occur.
What we can be certain about is that when government declares the means to be used, the desires result will take longer to achieve. The government choice of corn as a feed stock to produce ethanol for fuel was a bad choice not because if chose the least productive source for ethanol but because it slowed experimentation with other feed stocks.
Take off the blinders and look at the whole picture. We will all benefit.
seriously this is just a fail, its 2009 for f*** sakes, start using solar panels on vehicles and youd save fuel and money.
honestly imo america fails and will continue to be downfall into a 2nd world country while china, japan, great britian, and uk continue to evolve and rule the world once they sign a world agreement and keep one currency of money which isnt far from now.
america, im disgraced at you and this thing called freedom doesnt exist… cia nsa are watching you
“This helps to move us away from foreign oil - yay! but not from greenhouse emissions; it only space-shifts the pollution because most of our electricity is generated by burning coal. We also need domestically-produced renewably generated electricity, such as solar and wind, to re-charge these batteries!”
This is only PARTIALLY accurate. while we are indeed transferring SOME pollution from the pipe to the stack it is only a TINY PORTION of the original pollution! Electric Vehicles are so much more efficient than gas cars and electric plants are so much more efficient than gas cars that the actual pollution transferred to the power plants is TINY in comparison to the pollution removed from the roads.
On top of this the issue of pollution transfer is irrelevant.
Why? simple WE CAN make our own electricity we CAN NOT MAKE our own Gasoline.
So inevitably its easy to eventually ween us off of fossil fuel power plants (owe and only about half our power plants are coal powered) on top of that I am all for coal. its domestic. It puts money into american pockets. SO if we are going to use dirty power for now let it be coal until we have replacements.
Solar is a non starter in the long run UNTIL we solve the storage problem.
Sure I can put $40k in solar on my roof (and I just might) and erase my electric bill.
Guess whats going to happen as more and more people do this? well they STILL need to make power for my home at night when cloudy when my amp draw goes over what my panels can provide.
so eventually as more adopt solar they will be forced to STOP paying us for it as much as they are now.
Hopefully supercaps can help with this. I can see the day when foundations have arrays of super caps built into them and solar roofs standard. With 90cents a watt from nano solar I am hopeful about this.
But for now lets infuse well over ONE TRILLION dollars back into the general population (where it belongs) by getting rid of gasoline.
Push the president to revoke the GM/Chevron NIMH patent so we can have electric cars NOW not in 5 years when the patent expires.
That’s actually extremely cool and something the U.S. definately needs to cut down on pollution.
Several studies have shown that even with coal being burned that EV’s pollute about half as much as ICE’s. Coal is bad but electric motors are typically five times as efficient as gas engines so the overall impact is much less.
Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! It is about time the electric vehicle industry is finally being launched off the ground! 0-60 mph in 3 seconds! Excellent!
Keep up the good work!
I am considering putting my own U.S. patent on the market!
Gasoline powered cars are soooooo ancient! Gawwd!