Is This RUBBISH Electric Vehicle Britain’s BEST EV?!
More talk than a Model S plaid in ludicrous plus mode not to 50 in 6 seconds and it can carry no less than 10 tons of rubbish today we’re talking bin L’s and we’re here at lunar in Silverstone where they’re giving thousands of dirty old Refuge trucks the ultimate electric Makeover like fully charged then you’ll love our fun everything electric Expos around the world next up we’re in London and Harriet remember energy and transport professionals Go free on the first Day this is about lowering emissions one vehicle at a time imagine if you have a fleet and you have 500 vehicles within your Fleet if you choose to transition them to new EV Alternatives naturally those 500 Vehicles end up in other locations and they will produce emissions from further life extension
Now the key here is when a vehicle comes into lunar we decommission the engine you are lowering the emissions one vehicle at a time now these Refuge trucks start off life as internal combustion Mercedes Euro econic 6 Vans and they come in here get an electric makeover and get
Transformed into these upcycled electric trucks now these ones here they have four to six 65.5 KW batteries each weighing 570 kilos they’re actually provided by a cell manufacturer here in the UK and assembled here now the design is really specific and designed such that you can maximize the amount of
Space for collecting rubbish now the reason that it’s between four to six packs is because the range that you need is absolutely dependent on the different local Authority and the different routs some areas are much more congested than others some are hiler than others so lunar can work with local authorities or
Waste Management companies to understand how much range they actually need um but the top range is around 150 to 160 Mi now whilst these do add 570 kilos per battery pack increasing the overall weight of the vehicle thanks to a special dispensation from the Department of Transport this is still able to carry
10 tons of rubbish now the thing that is really interesting here is that this is powerful it packs a punch in fact it has 6,800 Newton M of torque 3 143 KW of power perhaps in large part thanks to the number of X Formula 1 Engineers that
There are here at lunar what that means is that this is genuinely a legitimate vehicle that you could use in a car chase even if laiden with 10 tons of rubbish so when we arrived today I did ask one of your colleagues if I could drive and they said of course if you’ve
Got a hgv license which sadly I do not possess so I can’t make any comments about how it feels to drive but I will say as a passenger it certainly doesn’t feel like a 26 ton vehicle how does it feel it’s really smooth and and you know
There’s not much effort required to to drive it we’ve put a a driver calibration on it now some of that is because we don’t want to give people a vehicle at 26 tons that would do not to 50 in 6 seconds it wouldn’t be wise but also because we’ve got to try and
Conserve energy so we put a driver calibration onto this vehicle that means that it drives exactly the same fully as it does if it’s actually you know there’s no difference it drives the same oh my goodness so whether it’s it’s fully loaded with 10 tons of rubbish or
Whether it’s completely empty it will feel extensively the same exactly the Same so rather than being a traditional vehicle Builder where you build the vehicle to a specific apption for multiple uses we’ve looked at the end user whether it be a council or whether it be one of the large Fleet operators in the waste management sector and ask
What do they require from a vehicle what are their problems with the vehicle you know information like rats chew through the Loom from the chassis to the body like these are areas that as a refuge truck with a body on the back which is predominantly for Refuge these are the
Issues they face how can we tackle these issues when we completely re-engineer this vehicle and I think that’s where you get a premium vehicle at the backside this is not a like for likee equivalent of what the used vehicle was this is also not a new vehicle this is
What I would call a better than new vehicle if you think about it these spaces are ostensibly people’s offices it is their place of work and it should be a nice place to be and so there are all sorts of things that the lunar Engineers wanted to include which they
Found out when they went and sat in on bin rounds and really sort of understood what are some of the pains that that people were having to go through now one of the things that they mentioned was that there were only two cup holders which seems totally illogical if you’ve
Got four people in the front you need at least four cup holders and Lunas have gone one better they’ve actually got five now one of the other things that they mentioned was that this paneling used to be very dark and that meant that the cabin felt very dark so they changed
The colors made it feel much lighter and brighter and one of the things that’s extremely tempting about this panel here is putting your feet up on it so if you’re going to put your feet up on it why not coat it with a material that can withstand a little bit more wear and
Tear and in fact they’ve coated this with the same material that you see on airplanes they’ve also got two screens here so one is for Apple car play so the people sat here they can control the music the Saab or what have you and this one here is for cameras and there are
Cameras which just seem to make absolute sense and it’s almost you know ridiculous to think that they didn’t exist there before such as a 360° camera so you can see the whole way around the vehicle you can see where the bins are you can see where people and pedestrians
Are um and obviously that is so so important when you’ve got this thundering great big truck that has to go down super teeny tiny narrow roads they’re able to have that very clear view which is going to make the whole experience that much safer so when lunar sat with various different teams
Apparently there used to be so much debate about this middle seat and who would get the middle seat um and that’s because it was way more comfortable than the other ones so they spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this much more comfortable to sit in and
These seats are definitely an upgrade from their predecessors way more comfortable and partly because they have heated seats as well and a heated steering wheel which I have to say you know today it is like n degrees C we’ve been getting in and out of the vehicle and I’ve been incredibly grateful to
Have that heated seat just watch your step it’s very nice having the full height door I don’t need to duck step yeah okay so you’re going to show me how to do I’ll show you the first one then you can do the next one fa right grab your bin
As you normally would got a bin watch carefully on the buttons drive it up make sure it’s onto the points of the back and you press this blue up Button and then the back want to bring it down blue for up dark blue for down y got it okay perfect you got that one I could not give you a good reason why but I have always wanted to do this right it up how do I know it’s align
Just as far forward as it can be that’s it and then you just press the the button got a good amount of momentum on that one back on and on to the next one there you go 10 more hours 1,587 to go when it comes to upcycling and
Retrofits I kind of get it from a you know bespoke vehicle perspective because it’s it’s almost like coach building but when you scale that up to make it work for thousands of vehicles per year that’s where my mind begins to Boggle so how on Earth have you made that possible
You do think about other Industries this is really common practice in aviation Marine it’s only Automotive that no one’s ever tested that formula whether you can upcycle a product that exists so if you look at those Industries you can see examples where this is already taking place around the globe so as you
Can see with Silverstone we’ve built this Factory to serve a, 1600 100 Vehicles a year but we’re taking another facility which is purely on the like upcycling aspect of the business where it’s strip re blast and it’s really key that you do this at scale otherwise there’s zero impact you know when you
Look at the operators around the globe and the requirement they have for this transition you have to scale with the demand that is there and it’s key as we Pioneer within this industry in the automotive aspect of upcycling that others follow within this space because this has to happen within this
Transition of these 2 billion Vehicles Lunas have been busy perfecting the system that’s needed to make sure that this can really scale and here in this 250,000 ft facility they can make 1,00 upcycled electric trucks per year and the reason they can is because the process is pretty straightforward really
It’s an 11 tact process which means there’s 11 really key steps in the dance and step one a vehicle comes in the 7.7 l in line 6-cylinder diesel engine gets removed decommission and recycled then you have some mechanical assembly then some sub assemblies go in like your cooling system your auxiliary systems
Your power train then we have the battery cradle and the rear carrier then you have your HV dpu your high voltage power distribution unit and finally your ETO your electric power takeoff which is the thing that runs the hydraulic system such that it can lift the bins and then
The final step in the dance when the interior and cabin are all brought together to make this a really really beautiful rubbish truck since this film was recorded the lunar group has announced it will restructure in order to rcope timelines for commercial vehicle production this aligns with challenging market dynamics
Due to anticipated and confirmed shifts in the ban on IC commercial vehicles in the UK however Luna still plans to produce these vehicles at a later date when market and policy conditions can better drive demand so if you buy an upcycled electric vehicle clearly you’re already saving carbon at the tailpipe
But you’re also saving a tremendous amount of embedded carbon and if you take a vehicle like the Mercedes Euro conic 6 it’s designed to last a million miles and yet might only be used for 70,000 to 90,000 and so coming here and up cycling it it means that Lunas can
Save up to 80% of the embedded carbon and a factory like this will save the equivalent weight in carbon as the Eiffel Tower each year now I’m not sure if you’re going to be able to answer this question but I think given the the sheer speed in which
You’ve scaled here um I imagine that there are other vehicles up your sleeve what’s next yeah well we’ve hidden a few today and uh you know right now we are focused on servicing the waste management sector and obviously the Mercedes econic uh which is one of the platforms that we’ve started on has
Multiple uses in applications but we are really focused on getting the what You’ say the package correctly after care correct to really service something that we all need waste is a key key factor within all of our lives and obviously there are so many different vehicle classes that this is a correct
Application for I mean just go to an airport and look at half of those ground support equipment you know these are obvious candidates within this business but uh you’ll see a lot coming out of Lunas over the next few years for local authorities going electric is a major part of net zero
Plans and finding a way to do it in the most straightforward and coste effective way possible is absolutely vital but going electric isn’t a like for like swap no with the right people doing it it can be the ultimate electric makeover the Ultimate Upgrade so rubbish trucks by name most certainly not by
Nature
What do we do with all the existing Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles on the road?! How do local authorities and councils get their cities to net zero on time and within budget?! Lunaz may well have the solution! In the home of F1 in Silverstone, Lunaz Applied Technologies and Lunaz Design are busy converting both classic cars and old refuse trucks to electric, saving vast amounts of embedded carbon, money and maximising the usable lifespan of these vehicles. However, when it comes to the bin lorries, Lunaz isn’t just doing a quick and dirty conversion with a bunch of batteries, it’s giving these old Mercedes Econic Euro 6s the ultimate electric makeover. From beautifully crafted seats, incredible consideration to user experience, to infotainment and performance these vehicles offer stats that make even a Tesla Model S plaid in ludicrous plus mode weep! Imogen paid the team a visit to find out more!
Since we filmed this episode it has since emerged that the business is restructuring owing to the challenging market created by ambiguity for Local Authorities surrounding 2030 ICE bans. The team are busy restructuring and evaluating their production timelines and we wish this team of enormously talented engineers committed to making the road to net zero that much more straightforward and affordable, the very very best of luck.
@fullychargedshow @EverythingElectricShow
00:00 Tesla Beating Trucks
00:46 Converting vehicles and decommissioning engines
01:19 Upcycled Electric Vehicles
02:52 Out on the road
03:55 Bespoke Conversions
04:42 Interior Review
06:47 Imogen does the bins!
08:24 Converting at scale?
09:32 Conversion Process
10:55 A Million Miles!
11:29 What’s Next?!
12:21 Concluding thoughts
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