We're obviously very interested in hybrid vehicles here at Ars Technica; our very first car review back in 2000 was on the then-new Honda Insight. But while we've covered the development of hybrid cars since then, we haven't paid quite as much attention to other parts of the transportation sector. As it turns out, there's plenty of interesting work going on trying to make large trucks more fuel efficient. One such example is Wrightspeed, which has been building hybrid powertrains that companies like Fedex can use to completely replace the conventional internal combustion bits on their existing trucks.
"[They have] all the things you need to make the vehicle go," Ian Wright told Ars. Wright is one of the original founders of Tesla but more recently has been focusing his attention on bigger vehicles, "since they burn so much fuel."
Wrightspeed's powertrain consists of electric motors (one for each drive wheel) powered by a battery pack, which can either be plugged in and charged from the grid or by the range-extender, a turbine running on natural gas. This replaces the diesel engine, transmission, propshaft, and differentials one might normally expect to find in something like a delivery truck.
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