Featured "First mass-produced electric truck"

Number of Stores in each administrative division | Seven-Eleven Japan shows 19,860 stores.

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Appears 7-11 is held by a Japanese company.
7-Eleven - Wikipedia

There is only about 10,500 stores in North America, with 8144 in the US as of 2013.
Fun Facts - 7-Eleven Corporate

 

What's the max power draw to get up to speed? And are they going to make a self-driving model?

 

Here are the few details available
Mercedes Unveils eCanter Electric Truck, Partners With StoreDot On Fast Charging Batteries - Gas 2

That makes the battery modules add up to 82.8 kwh about the size of the battery in the 310 mile tesla model 3. If Usage is similar to the model three it would have around 25 mpge which is great for a delivery truck. My guess is that it uses a 250 kw or less motor.

This is a much less expensive delivery truck, than a semi. I'm sure its not self driving. It is very different than the larger longer distance semitruck tesla is trying to develop. Fuso appears to be working on a semi too.

 

Just watched their video. So, how does StoreDot manage to dissipate 3000 amps without overheating/damaging the battery or propagating dendrites? Can any of these "pouches" self-repair?

 

If the inability of Mitsu to EVER get their Plugin Hybrid 4x4 Outlander into the united states is any indication .... we're talking delay after delay after delay - year after year.... (despite its extreme popularity around the world where ever it is imported to) - well - you can be positively certain beyond all doubt that this EV truck will NEVER see the light of day over here.

 

this is really part of daimler the parent of Mercedes. There are already 8 of the trucks in new york. Real volume is not expected until 2019.

who knows. they are saying 100 km, but the delivery truck can not go fast enough for the epa cycle (top speed is 50 mph). I don't think that really matters though. these are made for city delivery trucks. They don't need to get on the highway and go fast in New york or tokyo - the first markets.

 

say you estimate ~7 or 8kWh unusable buffer (~4 kWh hi & low sides of empty/full) leaving you 75kWh's to operate (heat/AC/driving/cargo refrigeration?), but prudent operators have to account for distance to closest J1772 (or hopefully CHAdeMO?) so you'd never want to dip into your bottom 2 or 3kWh's of range if not an emergency. That leaves maybe 72kWh's. Using a J1772 to full charge, even @ 7.2kWh's means at least 10hrs charge time, accounting for slowing near full to balance cells.
If it DOES use CHAdeMO (& the U.S. version Outlander dropped DC/QC) then using a typical ChargePoint 40kW model means your truck takes 1¾hrs to recharge ... as they slow down, nearing 90% full. Many CHAdeMO models limit speeds to 25kW's to avoid large electrical demand fees - rationalized as being necessary due to having to install larger nearby Transformers sometimes. A 25kWh CHAdeMO would take nearly 3hrs to refill. Still much quicker than a J plug. That presumes of course these handfull of trucks will even have DC Quick Charge capability.
Hate to say it, but this model almost makes fuel cell trucks seem to be a quicker option, except for the fact Canadian bus experiments already show the huge increase in maintenance costs.
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In Japan, CHAdeMO might be as plentiful as water fountains.
But this truck in a high population density city like Toyoko or NYC, may only need the slow overnight charge for daily duties.
Fleet DNA: Commercial Fleet Vehicle Operating Data | Transportation Research | NREL
Three tons of cargo makes this a small truck, so check out the delivery van data there(site doesn't encourage posting its graphs.)
The majority of the 94 vans being tracked there and average speeds of under 20mph over the day. Then much of the daily distances traveled are under 60 miles.

 

Delivery trucks normally go back to a common depot. Energy use will go up with bad weather, but these won't need to find outlets. In Tokyo charging outlets are highly dense outside the depot. I would expect that they would have higher power chademo in Japan initially, and no idea what in america. If you look at the gas 2.0 article I posted above, you will see that they are partnering with a company that is trying to provide battery packs and charging to recharge in 5 minutes (about 900 KW charge rate). Porsche has been testing its 350 KW charger, and Daimler (the parent of fuso), Ford, and BMW are working with vw group to get 400 of these chargers out in the US and Europe. For some companies a J1772 will be fine. Many urban routes are less than 100 km/day. I am sure this is true for the initial trucks in the US and Japan. My bet is when volume production hits 2019, US and european customers will be able to deploy some very quick chargers. Porsche installs first ultra-fast 350 kW EV charging station | Electrek

I'm sure in 2019 fuel cells would be a "faster" option for refueling, if refueling speed was all that mattered. Think of the fueling and maintenance cost? Fuel cell busses have much higher maintenance costs than diesel. BEV busses have much lower maintenance costs. In NREL's study of busses built in 2015, BEV busses did have less availability than diesel busses, so that needs to be worked on, but I can't imagine 7-11 or UPS deciding to use fuel cell busses unless the government completely paid for it. Outside of maintenance the installation of even 13 - 350 KW - 2 plug charging stations at a depot (fast enough to charge 13@350kw or 26@175kw) is much cheaper than even one 10,000 psi hydrogen fueling operation. Not only that, but cost of fuel is so much lower even at peak for electricity than hydrogen, and hopefully these will be mostly charged off peak.

I doubt the 5 minute recharges will happen soon, but there are lots of chemistries in the lab, that can do that today. The question is how much do they cost and how reliable are they versus the current battery tech that vw group, tesla, Panasonic, LG, and samsung have developed.

I could not tell from their public information what is in these pouches, other than organic material, and likely alkali metals in a gel or solid state cell. This is different than the solid state batteries from alkali/glass being developed at the university of texas, but perhaps they have similar operations. Ions align in the glass electrolyte, but there is no liquid or gel to form dendrites. Toyota may be doing similar things in their solid state battery. The chemistry of the 3 are different though.
A Clear Winner in Charge To Build Better Batteries | SIGNAL Magazine
There is a patent application for the UT team's initial glass electrolyte for those that want to read through it. They are further along now and are in the process of filing more patents.
Patent US20160368777 - Water solvated glass/amorphous solid ionic conductors - Google Patents
I expect we will see many more details of the 3 technologies only after patents have been granted.

The consumer electronics version of the StoreDot batteries are first supposed to be sold next year in iphone battery cases and usb power banks along with 150 watt chargers to charge them in 5 minutes.

 

I've read more and am fascinated by the new tech in the StoreDot batteries. It appears that the material science came from research of the brains of alzheimer patients. They found that there was organic material (peptide) that affected neurons in the brains of these patients had high capacitance, which is not good for your brain but great for batteries and some other electronic components. They started combining 2 different peptides into a nano dot about 2.5 nanometers in diameter. I don't really know the shape, but that is probably the largest dimension. They are using nano technology to put these NanoDots (as they call them) into the electrodes of batteries and into low energy displays (think phone, tablets, and laptops). In the batteries the NanoDots should first act like supercapacitors allowing fast transfer of energy, then it will be used to charge the rest of the battery. This should extend battery life as well as allow for faster charging. It looks like they are starting with lithium polymer batteries with anodes and cathodes containing these nanodots. They say eventually they expect to move away from the lithium chemistry.

They at first demoed these batteries charging in 30 seconds from the lab. Now that they are closer to commercialization (they say next year) they have slowed it to 5 minutes (probably needed to actually have long cycle life). The first products will be a battery iphone case, and a USB power bank. Those things are outside of the phone and tablet so they are low risk products. Samsung was an initial investor, so I am guessing if Samsung thinks the tech is ready, they will put the batteries directly in their phones and tablets. Daimler provided the biggest investment so far $60 million, for what looks like a 10% stake. StoreDot says it plans to have batteries suitable for cars out for testing around 2020. It looks like it might be possible to have them in a production vehicle around 2022 then which is pretty cool. Its a tiny company, so this is a long shot, at a truly disruptive technology. Still I would bet that one of the newer battery technologies - sodium, solid state, NanoDot, air - will be in a production car in the next decade. There is a lot of money to be made, and a lot of interesting material science. We should know by the end of next year if StoreDot batteries work for phones in the real world.