"Just What the Doctor Ordered -- 100 MPG Full-Size Pickup" Green Car Advisor

Just What the Doctor Ordered -- 100 MPG Full-Size Pickup

Click on images to enlarge. You may need to click on the smaller images twice to bring them into focus.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Raser Technologies has signed a deal to develop and deliver a 100-mile-per-gallon extended range electric pickup truck for testing by Northern California utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The 5-year-old Provo, Utah, developer of electric motors and controllers, says its proprietary plug-in EV system can enable full-size light pickups to achieve up to 140 miles per gallon in city driving and 33 MPG on the highway.

The company's system is a series hybrid, the same kind that drives diesel-electric locomotives and giant cruise ships.

It uses a combustion engine, but only to power an on-board generator that produces juice for an electric drive system. A 3-D animation on Raser's website offers an excellent look at how the drivetrain works.

The system to be used for the pickup combines a powerful 200-kilowatt electric traction motor and 700-volt lithium-ion battery system with a 100 kilowatt generator powered by a small 4-cylinder gasoline engine, said Raser spokesman Robert Putnam.

The batteries, initially charged from a home or commercial outlet, store sufficient energy to enable a full-size pickup or SUV to achieve up to 40 miles of all-electric drive before the combustion engine kicks in to generate power to keep the vehicle moving and recharge the batteries.

A promotional video on the company's website calls its prototype extended-range pickup "a Volt on steroids," referring to General Motors Corp.'s eagerly awaited extended range Chevrolet Volt electric car.

As in the Volt, the Raser truck's engine would run only long enough to fully recharge the batteries. The truck would then revert to battery-electric mode until the charge was depleted, when the engine would switch back on to generate more power.

That cycle could be repeated for up to 400 miles on the initial grid charge and a single 12-gallon tank of fuel, according to Raser, which calls its system E-REV (extended-range electric vehicle).

Raser is partnering with global automotive engineering services provider and systems integrator FEV Motorentechnik and also is expected to announce an automaker-partner in coming weeks.

It previously signed an agreement with an unidentified "leading global automaker" to build a demonstration extended- range SUV using Raser's electric drive and controller systems and said this week that the vehicle is almost completed.

PG&E earlier this year signed a deal with Raser for two additional prototype extended-range SUVs.

The company sees its demonstration models leading to broader fleet sales and ultimately to mass market sales of trucks and SUVs using its electric drive systems, said David West, Raser's marketing vice president and founder of the Plug-In Hybrid Consortium, which is cooperating in the E-REV pickup project.

"We looked ahead 10 years and saw a market driven by fuel priorities," West said. "Customers are going to care about operating cost and carbon [dioxide emissions]."

He said he believes that government and utility company incentives will help offset the battery and electronics costs that will continue to make EVs and hybrid vehicles cost more than conventional combustion-engine models.