A quick spin in Peterbilt’s Model 536EV

Speaker 1:

The funny thing about being in an electric truck is you're never really sure if it's ready to go, right? Hey everybody, CCJ editor JC Cannon here. I'm here with Zach Gross, Pierbuilt Marketing Manager, and we have one of Peterbilt's new medium duty EVs. And we're going to have Zach tell us just a little bit about what we have going on here.

Speaker 2:

This is our Model 536 EV. So this is a class six truck. We also have our 537 EV and 548 EV that are now available. Just tell you a litle bit about the truck on the exterior. This is our unique grill pattern for our battery electric trucks. Again, it's available in the 536, 537 and 548 EV. Also, some unique exterior features. We have these side bezels as well as EV unique logos in the dorm. And then you'll see underneath the door here, here's our battery string for these medium duty trucks. This truck is configured with two high voltage battery packs. So you'll see this one here and then one on the other side on the passenger side of the cab. These trucks are also available with a three high voltage battery packs and if you get that, you'll have one more battery pack behind the cab here.

The range on these trucks goes up to 250 miles. This two high voltage battery pack is 200 mile range. So these are CCS1 chargers. They can take up to 350 kilowatt charging. So good for midday top off if you need to during a lunch break.

All right. Getting up inside the cap here, you'll notice in the door we have again, these BEV exclusive logos. And then getting on into the interior, we have our Magnato Gray interior. You'll notice that this one has a seven inch infotainment package and something that's exclusive to our battery electric trucks is our 15-inch display here. It's got a wealth of information related to all your battery electric. So whenever you're driving these trucks, you'll rest assured knowing that you know what the range is. You can easily see right here how much battery's left and it gives you region braking features and everything you need. Whenever the truck's plugged in, it'll give you charging information, let you know how long until it's fully charged. And there's also pre-scheduling and preconditioning available as well. So lots of great features in this truck. You'll notice the visibility in this truck's great.

With our medium duty products, we have a 107-inch BVC and a 109-inch BBC. This is the 107-inch BBC hood. So it's great visibility. You'll also notice this truck has the fusion bender cruise control and wing them side object detection. You can see it right there. And then here's the camera for it up in the windshield and there's also a radar in the bumper. So those different sensors give you really good safety features. Make sure that you know that your fleet's going to be protected on the road. This particular motor and this truck right here is 1100 foot pound torque motor. So you have a lot of torque. This truck has 365 horsepower continuous and then up to 470 peak horsepower. So it's good motor, provides a lot of torque to it. These trucks have a mid-ship motor in them. They don't have E-axle. So basically everything from the motor rearward is just like a diesel truck.

And so they're really good for any sort of body integration thing that you need.

Speaker 1:

What's the

Speaker 2:

Advantage

Speaker 1:

Of the more

Speaker 2:

Conventional

Speaker 1:

Drive line

Speaker 2:

Versus the wheeling motor? Part of that is the body upfit. You don't have high voltage cables going to the axle that you need to worry about. Do you have a standard drive line? So mechanics that are used to just using a standard driveline, they're not going to have anything different there. The rear axle, anything there is available. Another great thing is all of our suspension options that are available on our diesel product are available on our battery electric. So this truck here, for example, has our Peterbilt low air leaf suspension on it, the 21,000 pound one. I think there's a lot of good benefit to that for just doing body integration work. You'll notice our cab has a lot of storage to it. You see in the cup holders over here in the tray and then our door pads. Something else is we build these trucks and put a lot of validation into them.

So for example, the door pad, you can stand on this door pad. It won't rip off because we do a lot of testing to make sure there any kind of handpoint or something that we think somebody might grab. We design it to make sure that it's going to stand up. So you'll notice the steps on these trucks are extremely robust. They're very strong. They don't flex at all whenever you get on them.

So this is our low voltage battery box system with the disconnect switch. Make it easy for you to turn off the low voltage system when you don't need it. This is our high voltage battery under the passenger side. Again, there's one on the driver's side as well. This is the wingman sensor that I was telling you about the Bendix sensor. So if a car's coming up, it'll alert you in the cab and make sure the driver's aware that there's somebody in their blind spot. Again, I mentioned our steps. They're very robust and strong. So when you step on them, there's no flexing going on here. We have these grab handles on both sides of the cab, be able to get in and out easily. All right. Another safety feature I wanted to point out is our LED headlamps. Our trucks come standard with halogen, but if you upgrade to these L8D headlamps, it's a huge benefit.

The visibility is fantastic on these things. If you're worried about them freezing up on you if you're in the north, there's a heater built in the lens here. So you can quickly de- ice the headlamp. The bumper's a three-piece breakaway bumper. If you run into something, the bumper will break away, but it won't necessarily break. So to fix it, you can just loosen the bolt, put the bumper back where you need it if it's in the corner. And just tighten it down and be good to go there.

If you've got the brake there, go ahead and push it to release and then ... Go ahead. And then your shifter column here is very automotive feeling. So you just have neutral, which it should be in right now. Or did you already flip it to drive?

Speaker 1:

Yep, we're in drive.

Speaker 2:

We're in drive, so we're good to go.

Speaker 1:

All right. We even got a little coast go and that's unusual for unelectric in a lot of cases.

Speaker 2:

So notice while you're driving it, the one pedal braking. It's a pretty cool feature. Why don't you put some region back into the motor and help you save on your rain.

Speaker 1:

So what would you consider a typical customer for this truck to be? I mean, it's got a big box on it, so I guess we're looking at maybe Amazon relay deliveries, urban home delivery type stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yep. Great for urban home delivery. Anything that's stop and go is really good for the battery, battery electric application. This one has a box on it. We have been working with utility companies. Again, mechanic service is another good application for it. Our 536s, 537s, and our 548s, they're very robust. They go into vocational applications. So there's a wide range of applications that these things can go into. Good for city, good for range, people that are worried about range. This truck has about 200 miles of range, any kind of city driving application that's a good fit for. Also, trucks that are going to be go to a site and then power EPTOs or equipment. It doesn't take a whole lot of power to power lowest PTOs out there. And so you can drive there, power off the truck or keep power on, but use the power from the truck, run your utilities all day and then make it home.

So it's good application for that as well.

Speaker 1:

But this is a class six truck, is that right?

Speaker 2:

That's right. This one's class six, but they're available in class seven. So if you get a 537 EV, then that'll be a class seven. And if you get a 548 EV, then you're getting a class eight truck.

Speaker 1:

Well, Zach and I are back from a quick little loop around the Las Vegas Convention Center parking lot. Fairly low speed. I think we talked 15 miles an hour, two or three times. Got the use of the region brake on all three stages. A big fan of the stage three. We can almost stop the truck just using the engine brake or what's the equivalent of the engine brake. Nice little class six truck we've got here. Makes a lot of sense in local delivery, maybe some food and bev applications. This is an excellent addition to Peterbilt's medium duty lineup, especially considering that this is a nice addition to the electric medium duty lineup.