Big yellow school buses go green with electric power

Blue Bird electric school busSchool buses may be the perfect application for electric vehicles. They run short delivery routes, sit for hours in between, and deliver the most environmentally precious cargo of all. School districts who want to get on board don’t have to wait. Blue Bird, perhaps the best known coachbuilder with vast vats of yellow paint, now offers three...

Mack plans to send electric trucks to the garbage dump

Mack Electric LR garbage truckA lot of ink, pixels, and synapses get spent trying to figure out how to make heavy duty electric trucks that can travel 500 to 1,000 miles in a day and get a fast enough recharge before heading back to work. Recent studies have shown a far more effective way to reduce pollution is to supplant short-haul machines that spend most of their time in...

Report: Rivian in talks with GM and Amazon

Rivian R1T electric pickup conceptGeneral Motors and Amazon could soon invest between $1 billion and $2 billion into Michigan-based electric vehicle hopeful Rivian, according to a report from Reuters. If the reported talks result in a deal, the two companies could end up with minority stakes in Rivian, as it pushes to get its fully electric pickup—widely seen as the star...

EPA announces tighter smog regulations on heavy trucks

EPA Acting Administrator Andrew WheelerThe EPA has loosened or eliminated a lot of regulations since President Trump took office, but last week the agency announced it would tighten regulations on emissions of nitrogen oxides from heavy trucks such as semis. The EPA notes that smog-forming NOx emissions from heavy trucks fell 40 percent between 2007 and 2017 after the agency last...

EPA reinstates limitations on dirty diesel glider trucks

Fitzgerald Glider Kits headquarters in Crossville, TennesseeIn a reversal of its reversal, the EPA said Thursday that it would enforce limits on dirty "glider" trucks after all. Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler put the brakes on his predecessor's decision to not enforce an Obama-era rule on dirty diesel big-rigs. CHECK OUT: States join to halt EPA's reversal on "glider" semi trucks Glider trucks are...

2019 Chevy Silverado will offer new turbo-4 that can run on 2 cylinders

2019 Chevrolet Silverado 1500Chevrolet announced last week that its upcoming 2019 Silverado full-size pickup will offer a new turbo-4 in place of the base V-6 in some models. Like the V-8s in some of GM's large pickups, the new engine will have active cylinder management that cuts two of the four cylinders during light loads. Earlier this year, GM announced that two of its...

1912 electric truck: Take that Tesla Semi!

1912 Commercial Truck, Curtis publishingThis month, it seems like electric trucks are coming coming off the drawing boards and onto the roads, right and left. But Nikola, with its hydrogen trucks, and Tesla with its all-electric models, are hardly the first truck makers to turn to electricity. Commercial Truck company of Philadelphia built 5-ton electric trucks as far back as 1912. We...