Tesla Co-Founder Ian Wright, a New Zealand-born engineer wants garbage trucks and delivery vehicles to finish its job smoothly. The Co-founder desired the trucks to run cleaner, less noise and more cost efficient in it's fuel consumption.
Ian Wright's plans to accomplish all that in his latest project the Wrightspeed. It is an electric powertrains system installed on medium-and heavy-duty commercial vehicles and runs according to desired outcome of the Co-founder.
Ian Wright said, "We save a lot on fuel. We save a lot on maintenance, and we make the emissions compliance much easier."
The market is growing to convert commercial trucks into an electric hybrid. Trucking operators are having a hard time in complying with the California's new strict emissions standards, When Wrightspeed came along to provide the required standards,vehicles will be installed with plug-in powertrains featuring an electric motor, battery system and an on-board generator.
Other features of Wrightspeed electric powertrain system are reducing the tons of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants emmited by trucks.
Cars like Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt or Tesla Model S are increasing to shift to the electric powertrain system. However it goes to prove that commercial car owners do not go through a simple process of replacing their diesel trucks with brand new ones.
According to Mark Duvall, a research director at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto: "It takes a lot of technological ambition to break into such an old and established market" and Mark added: "If you want to sell a fleet owner an electric truck, you have to convince them that it's better than what they're already using. So the bar is set very high."
It may be a wise decision to install a Wrightspeed motortrain that costs only $150,000 to $200,000, compared to having a brand new garbage truck with a cost estimate of $500,000.
There are 25 FedEx delivery trucks that Wright's company have installed Wrightspeed , and 17 garbage trucks for the Santa Rosa-based waste management company - the Ratto Group.
Ratto Group's chief operating officer - Lou Ratto said: "My hope is that this is something we can prove together with Wrightspeed and that we can be on the cutting edge of this, and I can transform my fleet and hopefully transform my industry."
