Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Ford, USA
VIDEO: Ford F-150 hybrid pick up truck gets 41 mpg
Pick up trucks seem to be vehicles that are ripe for fuel economy improvements. GM didn't do so bad with 40 percent city-driving gains made with their Silverado dual-mode hybrid but it's a far cry from what Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies (HEVT) has achieved with an ordinary Ford F-150. The Progressive X-Prize entrant has taken the plug-in path and produced a prototype that can go 15 miles on only electricity, get 41 mpg over a 30 mile distance and 21 mpg after that. Considering the vehicle they started with only got 16 mpg, we're impressed. Their alterations also give the truck more low-speed torque, V2G capability and 120V power availability. Pretty sweet!
They say the system can also be scaled for F-250s and F-350s. Heck, they're even working on slapping it into a school bus! This isn't just some shade-tree contraption either but rather the product of an early-stage technology venture developed under the watchful eye of Professor Ali Emadi at the Illinois Institute of Technology. HEVT has just unveiled their creation at the Plug-In 2008 Conference and Exposition in San Jose but if you couldn't make it to that event, we have not only a super video, but also a detailed press release after the jump.
[Source: Youtube / HEVT]
Press Release
Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, Inc. Unveils World's First Plug-in Hybrid Ford F-150 Pickup
Chicago Company Showcases Plug-in Hybrid Electric Conversion Kits Adaptable to Most Vehicles
San Jose, July 22, 2008 – Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, Inc. (HEVT) unveiled the world's first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) version of the popular Ford F-150 pickup truck at Plug-In 2008 Conference and Exposition, the first international plug-in conference and expo. Converted with a proprietary adaptive controller and using a scaled-down version of the proprietary drive train HEVT has designed for transit buses, the F-150 has been transformed from a standard combustion engine vehicle getting about 16 MPG to a PHEV getting up to 41 MPG for a typical day's driving. The HEVT prototype was displayed during today's keynote address by Dr. Andrew S. Grove, former chairman of Intel Corporation. "Trucks, SUVs and vans are the least-efficient vehicles on the road, so retrofitting them should be a high priority if we want to make a meaningful, near-term difference in oil consumption. Rapid commercialization of prototypes like HEVT's is the way to go," Dr. Grove said. The prototype shows how HEVT's plug-in hybrid drive train technology can retrofit existing PSVs (pickups, SUVs, and vans), to displace gasoline with electricity, cutting operating costs and harmful emissions and boosting performance. This is an important step toward energy security, because it reduces the fuel required to operate trucks and other large vehicles. "One way to reduce fossil fuel use is to find ways to plug in some of the hundreds of millions of internal combustion engines already on the world's roads," said CalCars founder Felix Kramer. "The pioneering PHEV designs for trucks and buses from Dr. Ali Emadi and his team at HEVT are especially promising." Engineers at HEVT have developed a sophisticated electronics and software system called the Adaptive Control Unit (ACU) which serves to control the hybrid drive train. While driving, the ACU controls use of the electric motor and gasoline engine to optimize fuel economy and performance. An in-dash display unit monitors performance, indicating the charge remaining in the battery pack and the energy recovered through regenerative -braking. "HEVT's solutions apply to not just smaller passenger cars and hybrids, but almost any vehicle including larger gas guzzlers," said HEVT founder Ali Emadi. "Our laboratory simulations show that the larger the vehicle, the greater the benefits – in gas costs, particulate and greenhouse emissions, and sound pollution. For this reason we are currently focused on PSVs and will later expand to school buses as well as transit buses." HEVT will begin with a small pilot program of Ford F-150 pickup truck conversions available to organizations and individuals on a custom basis. The pilot program will help HEVT's continued development and optimization, pushing conversion costs down and lowering lifetime cost of ownership for converted vehicles. # # # # # Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, Inc. (HEVT) is an early-stage technology venture specializing in design and development of hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle controllers, drive trains, and conversions. HEVT's mission is to lead the way toward sustainable transportation by providing innovative hybrid drive trains, adaptive controllers, and integrated motor differentials for pickup trucks, SUVs, vans, school buses, and transit buses. HEVT's solutions address rising fuel costs, global warming, harmful emissions, and sound pollution. Located at the University Tech Park on Illinois Institute of Technology's main campus in Chicago, HEVT has exclusive rights to the intellectual property, patents, and patents-pending covering this revolutionary technology developed by Professor Ali Emadi and his research laboratory at IIT, one of the world's leading teams specializing in power electronics and motor drives for automotive systems. University Technology Park at IIT is an entrepreneurial ecosystem designed to nurture a wide range of technological and scientific innovation with the support of the talent and resources available at IIT. The Technology Business Center and Incubator make UTP one of the premier technology parks in the country, serving technology-based companies in the early product- and customer-development stages that require lab and/or office space as well as convenient access to business development, university-based services, and highly-qualified student researchers. UTP is located at 3440 S. Dearborn in Chicago, 4 miles south of Chicago's Loop, and will eventually consist of 9 buildings with 1.5 million square feet of state-of-the-art space on 15 acres.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Snowdog 5:45PM (7/23/2008)
No it gets 21mpg and has a 15 mile electric only range.
41 MPG is another made up BS number like the Apteras 300 MPG number.
These numbers are bogus/arbitrary/misleading.
All you need to know is the actual mpg and the electric only range.
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Brian 6:16PM (7/23/2008)
No, your numbers are misleading. If it travels 19 miles total then it can actually get 100mpg!!!!!! ;-)
Don't be such a pessimist. Or do you work for Big Oil?
axiom 1:54PM (7/24/2008)
How is 41mpg a made up number if it consumes the equivalent of 41mpg fuel economy over a 30mile distance? One can only assume your other conclusions are equally flawed.
Can't wait to get a crack at the 300mpg Aptera hybrid series.
Snowdog 5:28PM (7/24/2008)
"How is 41mpg a made up number" says Axiom.
You have to get rid of the bogus conditionals, because otherwise you can make up any condition and quote any number. It is utterly meaningless.
Hey if I fill up my tank on top of big hill and coast home, my MPG is infinite.
If I convince friends to push much truck half the time, my MPG doubles.
If I have a 3 mile electric range, but stop at houses along the way to work and beg them for a recharge every mile my MPG is infinite... And so on...
MPG is based on burning fuel, by the gallon. When this truck is burning gas it gets 21mpg (supposedly) Not 41. If I go on a road trip I get 21mpg not 41mpg.
stevefazek 8:48PM (7/23/2008)
If i push my car home once it runs out of gas ill get much higher MPG
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me 9:59PM (7/23/2008)
How does the math even work on this article ?
41MPG over 30 miles. 21 MPG after that. First 15 miles are electric only.
OK. So of the 30 miles, 15 are electric, 15 are gas.
15 miles @ 21 MPG = 0.714 Gallons of fuel to go the 15 miles once the battery is "dead".
30 miles/ 0.714 gallons = 42 MPG. I wonder if 41MPG was a misquote or if the truck actually gets 20.6 MPG running on gas instead of the 21 MPG they use in the article.
They are not accounting for the electricity usage at all.
Notice they don't say how big the battery pack is, what it costs, how big the motor is nor what the vehicle weighs, ie does it have any payload left ?
All they do is trumpet a big number to get the public excited about their company and this technology.
Apparently MPGe means nothing to these people !
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me 10:02PM (7/23/2008)
How does the math even work on this article ?
41MPG over 30 miles. 21 MPG after that. First 15 miles are electric only.
OK. So of the 30 miles, 15 are electric, 15 are gas.
15 miles @ 21 MPG = 0.714 Gallons of fuel to go the 15 miles once the battery is "dead".
30 miles/ 0.714 gallons = 42 MPG. I wonder if 41MPG was a misquote or if the truck actually gets 20.6 MPG running on gas instead of the 21 MPG they use in the article.
They are not accounting for the electricity usage at all.
Notice they don't say how big the battery pack is, what it costs, how big the motor is nor what the vehicle weighs, ie does it have any payload left ?
All they do is trumpet a big number to get the public excited about their company and this technology.
Apparently MPGe means nothing to these people !
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meme 11:17PM (7/23/2008)
The worst of the "PHEV game" that I've seen so far was the "150 mpg" SUV that actually only got ~20mpg.
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Eric 10:22AM (7/24/2008)
I was able to make it to the public night at the conference and found these guys very interesting. The brochure they handed out explained how they got their numbers and I was surprised to find that they made sense with the truck and batteries they had.
The first thing they said to me was that they wanted performance first, fuel economy second. They had this wicked formula-hybrid racer next to their truck and apparently the students (not graduate engineers) were able to completely design and build a race kart for a national competition (which they were one of the top three this year).
So what they wanted to do was keep the performance of the F150 by adding the plug in kit. They don't completely deplete the batteries after the 15 miles. When they get down to a certain state of charge, they turn the gas engine on and use the truck in a hybrid mode for the next 30 or so miles; after which the batteries are completely depleted and the truck goes back to regular conventional mode with regen braking. The guy there said they could have padded their numbers by filling the bed of the truck with batteries but that's wasn't the point. If you drive more conservative you can get well over the 15 miles all electric but they gave this number as an average minimum to give people a rough idea what happens if you have a heavy foot. The guys were straight up, knew their [stuff] and I was very impressed with their system. I'm totally getting one (and their racer), lol.
And yea, that 150mpg SUV was a joke. The numbers on their charts didn't make any sense and their "engineers" couldn't back them up. Whatever.
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Hucbald 5:42PM (7/24/2008)
Oh, give me a break. Many of us full-size pickup drivers go hundreds of miles to do what we need to do with our trucks. Hybrids are useless in those applications.
Dodge has the right idea with the upcoming 4.6L Cummins V-8 turbodiesel for the 1500 series, which is why I'm getting one. I'm figuring a regular cab, long bed with a tonneau cover (Which I need for my gear anyway and have on my current RAM 1500 Quad Cab) will get right at 30 MPG on the highway @ 65 MPH. Heck, the low output Cummins in a 2WD 2500 gets between 20 and 25 MPG right now, and has for years.
Smaller displacement diesels are the answer for light trucks, not hybrids.
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Jim 1:54PM (7/31/2008)
Seems like veteran pick up drivers will need further enhancements to the hybrid models before being convinced, interesting though.
Shur Trax ... Give Your Pick Up Truck Added Traction
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Ecurb 7:09PM (8/27/2008)
The fact that they quote Al Gore at the end of the video indicates that they must be a bunch of liars and thieves.
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