Cummins, racing against Tesla, unveils all-electric truck

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Engine maker Cummins says it has jumped out in front of Tesla in the race to develop an all-electric engine for large trucks.

Cummins Inc. on Tuesday unveiled what the company is billing as the first of its kind zero-emissions truck that runs entirely on electricity. The 18,000-pound truck, built by Roush, is designed to be used for local deliveries, such as moving products between warehouses and stores. It has a maximum payload of 44,000 pounds and takes one hour to charge.

Cummins' demonstration, held at its technology center in Columbus, comes as the company is making a push to diversify its powertrains. Cummins is best known for making diesel engines, but it has been expanding its natural gas products and moving toward electric engines.

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Cummins in June announced that it would start producing electric powertrains for buses by 2019. The Tuesday unveiling of AEOS — named for a four-winged horse that drove the chariot of the sun god in Greek mythology — was another major step in Cummins' evolution, company officials said.

"Initially, these products will service the transit bus market, but this is just the beginning," said Julie Furber, Cummins' executive director of electrification. "We are going to take electrification to all our markets and the applications that we serve when the time is right. This truck enables us to demonstrate that electrified powertrains will be viable."

While Cummins might be the first company to show off an all-electric truck, its lead over Tesla and other startups might not last for long.

Tesla, which has built its business on making all-electric luxury vehicles, is just starting to wade into affordable sedans and large trucks. Tesla has announced that it will unveil a tractor-trailer of its own in September — one that likely will be larger than the truck introduced by Cummins. Reuters is reporting that Tesla's truck will have long-haul capabilities with a full charge lasting up to 300 miles.

Cummins' concept vehicle can travel up to 100 miles on a charge. The company projects that charge time for the battery will be reduced from one hour to 20 minutes by 2020.

Srikanth Padmanabhan, president of Cummins' engine business, declined to put a timeline on when the company might take its electric truck engines from concept to market. That will depend on when manufacturers want to build electric trucks and companies such as Wal-Mart and FedEx want to use them in their fleets, he said.

"The customers need to pull it rather than us doing it," Padmanabhan said. "We participate through our (original equipment manufacturers). We are working with leading OEMs that have shown interest in this technology and as they pull and as they announce, that is how we would go to market."

Cummins is moving faster toward producing electric engines for buses because manufacturers and municipal transit systems are ready to put them into service, he said.

Sam Korus, an industrial innovation analyst for ARK Invest, said he doesn't think all-electric tractor-trailers will be on the road until at least the early 2020s. The biggest case for making them a reality could be cost savings, he said. Electric trucks could cost 20 percent less per ton mile to operate and save 35 percent to 65 percent on maintenance, according to ARK Invest's research.

Korus thinks the key to producing long-haul electric trucks could be enabling drivers to stop and swap out batteries.

"The reason that something like this might make sense right now is you have truckers who are driving long distances in a single day," he said. "If you look at the way truckers actually are driving, they're still stopping every three to four hours to use the bathroom, check on a load, refuel, grab food. You can imagine that if you have this battery swapping infrastructure in place, it doesn't even change the behavior pattern of a trucker."

Jennifer Rumsey, Cummins' chief technical officer, said battery swapping is one possible solution, but it also raises other logistical hurdles.

Cummins isn't pinning its future solely on electric engines. The company has said it expects diesel engines to persist well into the future.

In addition to rolling out an electric concept truck Tuesday, Cummins also introduced a new engine classified as near-zero natural gas, as well as super-efficient diesel engines, and announced that it would produce a "revolutionary" new heavy-duty diesel engine in 2022.

"We are agnostic, if you will, in terms of what fuel that we use or what powertrain it is as long as we can help our customers do their job better," Padmanabhan said.

Call IndyStar reporter James Briggs at (317) 444-6307. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesEBriggs.