A new hybrid electric heavy duty truck developed by Edison Motors in Merritt, B.C., is now officially road-worthy.
“We have officially built the first truck in British Columbia… in over 30 years,” Edison Motors founder and CEO Chace Barber said in a press release. “We’ve officially built a truck that passes all the government certifications, a truck that can be driven on the road.” After putting in an order for a Tesla electric semi truck in 2017, and waiting four years, they decided to just build their own. They started doing retrofits, using conventional semi trucks and installing diesel-electric drive-trains and regenerative braking, but are now manufacturing the trucks entirely themselves.
Edison Motors' diesel-electric semi truck is suited to certain resource industries, such as logging, so there could be a big demand for them in B.C. Most of the power for logging trucks would be provided through regenerative braking when they are coming down off a mountain with a load of logs.