The world’s largest zero-emissions truck is more than two stories tall
Author: Adele Peters
The standard version of this truck also runs on a massive amount of diesel, with a single vehicle emitting as much climate pollution in a year as 700 cars. Around the world, thousands of these giant vehicles are in use. But a new retrofit can shrink a truck’s emissions to zero. First Mode, an engineering startup, has spent the last several months testing a prototype with the mining giant Anglo American, which now plans to roll out the technology in hundreds of other vehicles. The new design replaces the diesel engine with a combination of a battery and hydrogen fuel cells. It’s not a one-for-one replacement for energy-dense diesel fuel. “Diesel is used because it’s awesome - it’s a great fuel except for that one pesky problem of incrementally destroying the earth,” says Voorhees. While the truck refueled once a day in the past, now it needs to refuel three times in an eight-hour shift (fueling takes about 20 minutes, similar to filling up with diesel). But by tweaking the refueling process, the truck can still transport the same amount of material every day, which is the metric that matters for mining companies. While it’s not hard to build an electric car, the giant size of the truck made it challenging to redesign. “It’s a neighborhood-size power problem,” says cofounder Chris Voorhees. “The vehicles run on around two megawatts of power—that’s about 1,000 to 1,500 homes. So you’re cramming a utility-scale power and energy problem into an off-road vehicle that’s operating in a difficult environment.”