Truck of the Future? - Galt's Gulch

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Truck of the Future?

Posted by blarman 12 years, 4 months ago to Technology

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Wal-Mart is prototyping a brand new vehicle for its fleet. Check it out and leave your comments below.

SOURCE URL: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/18/see-the-futuristic-concept-truck-walmart-wants-to-use-to-maximize-efficiency-on-the-road/

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Posted by Robbie53024 12 years, 4 months ago

1) All that glass is going to turn the cabin into a sauna in the south.
2) What makes this more aerodynamic is the tapered front end. Still has the same frontal area, so making it less blunt helps to separate the air, but the overall effect isn't all that great - like I said, same frontal area, so still have to displace the same amount of air as you move through it.
3) Better tensile strength of carbon fibre doesn't really mean much for this structure. If it is used as the skin covering, it carries virtually no load. If it is used as structural members, most of the load is carried by horizontal beams which is not a tensile load. So probably much more costly to manufacture than a structure made of aluminum.

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  Posted by blarman 12 years, 4 months ago
  
  1. No disputes here (I'm in the Rocky Mountains). Tinted glass?
  2. Very true. They aren't trying to make it low-profile which would require cutting cargo space, just more aerodynamic.
  3. I agree on the engineering aspects. The question would then be to do a comparison of the "aircraft"-grade aluminum commonly used and the carbon fiber for cost and weight. If the goal is to eliminate weight, I'm thinking carbon fiber wins - even over aluminum - but at a substantial cost. I guess what they are anticipating is the fixed cost of build vs the variable cost of gas, and when gas prices just keep going up, I can see the variable costs quickly eclipsing the fixed costs...
  
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    Posted by Robbie53024 12 years, 4 months ago
    
    The last few years I've done quite a bit of work on shipping goods. You almost always run into either load weight or volume limits. For load weight limitation you can get by with smaller trailer (read that lower to reduce wind resistance). In those situations, you'd want as little frontal area as you could possibly get - lower tractor cab and low sidewalls on the trailer.
    For the volume limited, you can reduce the superstructure as the weight isn't as great.
    The problem is that we compromise on a tractor/trailer system that is not optimized for either situation.
    
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