February 3, 2022
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It seems like you can’t get far into a conversation about work trucks these days without someone mentioning electric vehicles (EVs). The first question usually asked of Knapheide is, “what are you doing with EVs?”
Guest Contributor
CHRIS WEISS
Vice President of Engineering
Knapheide
The simple answer to that question is, “the same things we’ve been doing before with commercial vehicles.”
However, it is more complicated than that. But, we can create work solutions for nearly any EV considering there are some trade-offs along the way.
When a customer looks to use an EV, or sometimes referred to as a BEV (battery electric vehicle) for their work truck solution, there are some key factors to be considered including:
• Available electric vehicle models and configurations
• Vehicle battery capacity (for both range and electrified work)
• Payload available on the vehicle
Each of these factors will play a key role in how we balance the alternatives and make a useful and productive work truck. It is important to understand our customer’s desire to use green technology like EV but more important to understand that the end user plans to do the same amount of work with that electrified vehicle.
With all the buzz happening around EVs, billions of dollars are being invested in the technology by both existing vehicle OEMs and start-up manufacturers. Even with all this investment going on, it will still take time for the development and release of many vehicles. The types and configurations of electric vehicles will not be infinite, so a customer will likely be faced with using a vehicle different from what they are using today.
As an example, there are many new electric vans and pickups coming to market initially with fewer amounts of chassis cabs. If a customer has many chassis cab applications today, they may be interested in looking at converting to van applications if they want to utilize EV technology in the short term. Alternatively, the same size and rating of EV may not be available, so a customer may have to try to downsize, upsize, or split the work application in order to create the EV solution with the vehicle configuration available.
// What are the customer’s needs?
A consistent theme in talking with customers about EV applications will be understanding what they are trying to do with the vehicle. A customer will frequently present an upfit specification for what they a want to accomplish. Knowing that trade-offs may be required for an EV version for their application, it is important to understand the details of the customer’s line of work to help balance these alternatives.
Far too often in the work truck industry, we put everything and the kitchen sink in an application in case it is needed. If we understand the work, storage, and cargo requirements our customer is seeking, we can best evaluate how to package that work and cargo into the EV configurations available in the market. There will be enough constraints involved in creating these work truck packages with EVs that the “kitchen sink approach” is not going to work.
// Addressing range anxiety
The concept of better understanding the customer’s specific work needs especially applies to the subject of available power. Battery technology is changing rapidly, but the density of power, or the weight per amount of power, is still large. Even though you eliminate an internal combustion engine and fuel system when moving to EV technology, you are still paying a weight penalty to do so with battery power. That means we are going to have less payload available in all classes of vehicles to achieve the same work the customer wants to perform.
Because of the larger power density, we are seeing travel ranges on upcoming EVs that are much less than their IC engine counterparts. Some of these initial commercial vehicles are stating ranges between 100-250 miles on a single charge. Range anxiety will certainly be a point of concern for our customers.
The range limitation also creates a shortage of power that can be used on auxiliary components the customer may need in certain applications. Many of these initial EVs have invertors that can be used to power equipment, but they have limited use because you are taking that power from the same battery that is producing a limited travel range. As a result, any significant power taken from the vehicle battery may make the application unusable.
Because of this vehicle battery limitation, we, as an upfitter and integrator, are faced with adding auxiliary power to achieve the customer’s work requirements. In today’s upfits, it is not uncommon to add battery or generator power in many applications. There will likely be a resistance to adding an engine-powered device on an EV not just from a philosophical approach to cleaner vehicles, but also because there is no common fuel source on the vehicle for that engine. This will require looking to batteries to fuel higher-powered work applications. That technology exists today and needs to be sized and packaged in a way that works for the application. Once again, power density is working against us, meaning more work will equal more weight.
// Tackling payload concerns
The third leg of the stool to be balanced in an EV upfit, besides range and power, will be payload. All three of these variables are interconnected, but available payload is the one that always seems to shrink. As mentioned, payload will be reduced when the vehicle becomes battery powered due to the power density. That payload will be further reduced by the amount of auxiliary battery power added to achieve the work needed. This is another key reason to understand the specific work the customer must achieve because excess equipment, cargo, or body components will take up critical remaining payload.
As a manufacturer, the only variable to move available payload in a positive direction is material. Making bodies and components out of lightweight materials like aluminum and plastics versus steel will gain at least a little of that critical payload back. In many cases, it will be difficult to regain all of that lost payload, but it must be considered when looking at all the factors for an application.
So, as we charge into this realm of upfitting electric vehicles, we will be faced with balancing that three-legged stool of range, power, and payload. It will be important to know more details about our customer’s application and planned use. Making trade-offs to achieve the customer goals on the available vehicles will be essential. In the end, though, Knapheide is fully capable of supporting our customers throughout this process and we will grow more knowledgeable in these applications and form a closer relationship with our customers.
