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Prototype: Carl
About Carl:
Carl is the name we gave to our prototype truck*,
He’s a 1962 Kenworth LW 924 made in Vancouver BC.
Carl was originally purchased in Merritt BC in 1962 where it worked for 40 years as a logging truck. The name Carl is in honour of the father of one of our investors who was a truck driver that unfortunately passed away as we were starting the built, Carl was a truck driver his whole life and believed in our idea, we thought it was only right to name our first truck after him.
It then sat for 15 years in a field rusting away before we decided to restore the truck and use it for our prototype diesel-electric hybrid.
We tore it right down, added new frame rails, air ride suspension, and a CAT 3306 Generator
We reinstalled 1 fuel tank for the diesel generator and added two large battery banks to each side of the frame rails like saddle tanks.
For electric drive motor we used a Tesla model S motor. We welded up the differential and spider gears on a and adapted a drive shaft to it. From that it goes into a 4 speed Spicer Aux transmission to reduce the gearing, and into a set of 4.33 rear ends.
The Generator charges the batteries in about 20 minutes as the truck is driving and the truck can drive for 2-3 hours off the batteries alone. The result is (starting out on a full charge) this truck can drive 1000 km on 120L of fuel which works out to 12L/100km (21mpg), which is absolutely incredible for a long nose Kenworth from the 1960’s. Before as a mechanical truck it got 40L/100km (6MPG) resulting in a 70% increase in fuel millage on a bobtail.
Due to the small tesla motor output shaft we have not tested it with a load as of yet in winter 2022 since when we tried to pull heavy we actually snapped the drive shaft output from the motor side. However this is not a concern for us at this point as the production trucks all use e-axles with planetaries rated for pulling semi truck loads. We are building a stronger output shaft now for spring testing but its not our main goal as we were successful in the parts that were important to us.
Carl accomplished our main goals of: connecting the generator to the batteries via a rectifier, it allowed up to make sure we could wire in controls for the electric motor, and it allowed us to get real world testing data of the truck on the move and how are systems work. It let us be incredibly confident in building the first production truck.
* All our trucks have names instead of unit numbers:
1962 Kenworth LW 924: Carl
1969 Kenworth LW 924: Old Blue
1971 Pacific: Harry
1981 Kenworth LW 924 - Thomas
1973 Kenworth W900a: Snowman
1999 Kenworth T300: Buddy