One of the issues in the design of zero emission trucks is going to be chassis space and weight distribution, making designers concentrate on saving space on an electric or hydrogen truck.
All of the electric and hydrogen trucks seen in Australia, so far, have a conventional rear drive axle with an electric motor rotating a driveshaft to connect into the drive axle differential, or a transmission. This is the simplest approach to take as it uses pre-existing components and it’s simply a matter of connecting them up correctly.
All of these designs then come into other problems further down the development track. They run out of chassis space to mount batteries, fuel cells etc. This also leads to high front axle weights well in excess of our current 6.5 tonne axle mass rules.
While the Truck Industry Council and others are pushing for a higher front axle mass, this is not going to solve all of the problems. Those solutions are going to come from elsewhere and, especially from smart design.
One solution which is coming through, but yet to appear here, is the e-axle. This is imply an integrated axle which includes both electric motor and differential, and sometimes a transmission, all in one package. This has a number of advantages. It brings the entire moving driveline down into one single compact package, it shifts the heavy components to the rear of the truck and it frees up chassis space for the extra batteries, or hydrogen tanks, needed to get a higher range for the truck.
One of these video show the Cummins Meritor solution to the problem of saving space on an electric or hydrogen truck and illustrates just how much more battery storage may be possible using one of the these axles. The other shows the ZF solution to the problem, which may be picked up by other truck manufacturers as an off-the-shelf solution.
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