The Port of Los Angeles is surrounded by extremely bad air quality. The primary culprit is “Drayage Trucks” that carry cargo containers from cargo ships to rail terminals a few miles away. There are thousands of these trucks, and they’re making daily trips back and forth, back and forth, to move containers from the port to the trains. This means a high concentration of Diesel exhaust in that corridor. It also means the South Coast Air Quality Management district has long been studying this problem, looking for a solution.
The trucks have to be Class 8 big rigs because of the nature of cargo containers.
Electric big rigs are made by several companies. The short distance these trucks drive per trip means the daily driving range is short enough to work well with an electric truck.
The SCAQMD is looking to demonstrate zero emission drayage trucks in real world container transport operations. They hope to eliminate 90% of NOx emissions from the South Coast Air Basin.
The SCAQMD is working with BALQON, TransPower, US Hybrid, and Vision Industries. All are electric trucks except for the one from Vision Industries, which is powered by a Fuel Cell.
BALQON’s truck is an MX-30 – it contains a 240 kiloWatt drive train, a 380 kiloWatt-hour battery pack (that’s not a typo), and a 160 kiloWatt fast charger.
Here’s all the trucks involved.
Program details: http://www4.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/resources/merit-review/sites/default/files/vss115_choe_2013_o.pdf
