Meet the world’s first electric heavy-haul locomotive
Wabtec’s FLXdrive Heavy Haul locomotive, the world’s first electric heavy-haul locomotive for mainline service, is headed to Australia to transport iron ore.
World’s first electric heavy-haul locomotive
Iron ore mining company Roy Hill is piloting the FLXdrive commercially in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. It has a max battery capacity of 7 megawatt hours (MWh). (To put that huge amount of energy output in perspective, just 1 MWh allows an EV to drive 3,600 miles or power an American home for 1.2 months.)
Roy Hill’s locomotive is painted pink because the company supports breast cancer research. Wabtec is finishing up the locomotive’s build now, and then it will be tested further in the first half of 2024. It will be shipped to Australia in the second half of next year.
The FLXdrive has six axles, a CoCo wheel arrangement, one operator cab, and 3.2 MW traction power. (Wabtec’s general specs say it’s able to configure the model with a max battery capacity of 8 MWh.)
But while the FLXdrive is electric, Roy Hill’s train won’t be. The FLXdrive will be paired with a diesel locomotive, making the train’s consist – a set of railroad vehicles that form a train – hybrid. Wabtec says the hybrid configuration will result in a “double-digit percentage reduction in fuel costs and emissions.”
Alan Hamilton, Wabtec’s VP of engineering, said in a video call with me that “the train set in Australia is typically a mile and a half long, and it’s heavy, so at this early period of adoption, we are combining the electric locomotive with a diesel locomotive. It’s the first initial practical step.” Roy Hill’s trains carry more than 33,000 tonnes of iron ore.
What’s interesting about Roy Hill’s FLXdrive model is that it’s going to charge entirely on regenerative braking. That’s possible because the train’s route goes up and down a mountain. Hamilton said that Roy Hill’s FLXdrive locomotive is “not critical for mission distance” because it’s paired with a diesel locomotive.
Gerhard Veldsman, CEO of Hancock Prospecting Group Operations, which owns Roy Hill, said of its FLXdrive model:
By using regenerative braking, it will charge its battery on the 344-kilometer [214-mile] downhill run from our mine to port facility and use that stored energy to return to the mine, starting the cycle all over again. This will not only enable us to realize energy efficiencies but also lower operating costs.
Electrek’s Take
This electric milestone in heavy-haul train transport is something to celebrate.
When I asked Hamilton whether Wabtec had active plans for battery-locomotive-only pilots, Hamilton replied that while he thought it was possible to build and run an all-battery heavy haul train, Wabtec’s strategy is currently “energy flexibility.” He also said that “diesel is going to be around for a while.”
The company’s “road map for sustainability” shows an all-of-the-above approach. The 2030+ plan includes diesel trains that Wabtec says have– a set of railroad vehicles that form a train – a potential CO2 reduction of 8%. It’s also got hybrid (30% CO2 reduction), fully electric (100% CO2 reduction, of course), and hydrogen (100% CO2 reduction) locomotives on its to-do list. There’s a vague mention of biofuels.
Rail is one of the most efficient and least emitting ways of transporting goods. In August, Antônio Merheb, the president of the International Heavy Haul Association, told the International Railway Journal that “the rail sector is recognized as the transport mode that emits the lowest level of polluting gases, which makes it an attractive option to reduce the environmental impact of freight transport.”
So it’s great to see Wabtec come up with a solution to reduce emissions further, but it feels a little like Wabtec is dipping its toe in the water with electrification. We know heavy haul trains are a big challenge to power with batteries; we just hope Wabtec pivots and rises to the challenge in the electric side of its sustainability plan.
Read more: Amtrak just rolled out its first-ever electric bus
Photo: Dan Cappellazzo/AP Images for Wabtec Corporation
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GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
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While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
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