Call that an electric truck? THIS is an electric truck...

[Pat McCotter]

Call that an electric truck? THIS is an electric truck...
By Toby Clark on May 15, 2009 2:13 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhqgVimGZRs

Prius? We don' need no steenkeeng Prius!

This video of a 300-tonne diesel-electric Euclid-Hitachi dumper with 'trolley assist' was sent in by BLB regular Dave Webster, who says:

    Going uphill the truck hooks into the main grid and gets a boost uphill and coming down it hooks into the grid and through regen braking puts electricity back into the grid. Check the tone of the turbos when the grid kicks in.


Here's the spec sheet of the 255-tonne payload Euclid-Hitachi EH4500 hauler, which has a 2,700hp Cummins or Detroit Diesel engine and Siemens/Euclid AC electric drive - with trolley assist the traction power can be more or less doubled, increasing the speed uphill by as much as 80%. Incidentally, Hitachi has formally dropped the Euclid name, although it still appears in descriptions of components. Now click through here for a roll-out shot of the R210 gas-turbine powered dump truck....

[David]

All huge industrial mining dump trucks that I know of are actually diesal electric hybrids, just as all modern trains.  No combustion engine can handle the torque required to move the loads from a stop to speed, so they have huge alternators that actually produce the energy to run the motors. 

[Pat McCotter]

This system lets them use bigger stationary generators to help climb the hills out of the pits.