Elon Musk hasn’t shown Tesla’s electric Semi Truck yet, but he’s ginned up excitement (and skepticism) in the heavy-duty vehicle space. Proterra, a fast-growing maker of battery-powered buses, took a page from Musk’s playbook with an audacious announcement: Claiming a world record for driving one of its vehicles over 1,100 hundred miles on a single charge.
The private company, which is led and staffed by ex-Tesla employees, says the long-range test of a 40-foot Proterra Catalyst transit bus at truckmaker Navistar’s proving grounds in New Carlisle, Indiana, is the farthest any electric vehicle has ever traveled on a single charge. With a total distance of 1,101.2 miles (1,772.2 kilometers), the result is 83 percent further than the 603 miles Proterra achieved in a long-range test a year ago.
The range test wasn’t done just to show off, but to demonstrate a variant of Proterra’s current lineup that will be offered for sale, CEO Ryan Popple told Forbes.
“It's our maximum range configuration, but it's still a production version of the bus; not a custom long-range vehicle,” he said. “It's actually a vehicle we're proposing for certain bus transit (projects) that require extremely long range.”
Popple didn't share a price for a long-distance Catalyst, though Proterra buses sell for about $700,000 each.
Regardless of Tesla’s ultimate truck market plans, there’s growing demand for cleaner buses and trucks, particularly in Europe, China and California, where state officials want big reductions in diesel emissions. Proterra has said it's racing to keep up with rapidly expanding orders for Catalyst buses from cities across the U.S. that want to attract more riders with high-tech vehicles in their transit fleets and also reduce fuel and maintenance costs.
(For more see Proterra's Ryan Popple Is On A Mission To Electrify The Transit Bus Business.)
Musk said this month that Tesla will unveil its Semi at its design center in Hawthorne, California, on October 26. The restless billionaire tech industrialist provided no details about the vehicle in a Twitter announcement, beyond saying: “Worth seeing this beast in person. It's unreal.
Proterra believes it now makes the highest energy density electric vehicles in the world, topping the Tesla Model S or Chevrolet Bolt. The range demonstration shows how far Proterra’s electric powertrain has advanced, and that it can provide vehicles for use as long-range tour buses, school buses and even trucking applications, said Popple said, a former Tesla finance manager, without elaborating.
"There's no transit route that's 1,200 miles long, obviously."
The company has also co-developed a lithium-ion battery cell with Korea’s LG Chem that's optimized for heavy-duty vehicles, rather than electric cars. E2 battery packs with the new cell will be produced at Proterra’s combined headquarters and battery production facility in Burlingame, California.
Proterra says its E2 packs have the heavy-duty industry’s highest pack-level energy density and are made from light "ballistic-grade" materials to withstand rough road conditions. The company's goal is to produce 500-megawatt hours of E2 packs annually in Burlingame.
Dustin Grace, a former Tesla engineer, oversees battery development, and Chief Operating Officer Josh Ensign, also a Tesla veteran, is boosting bus production at Proterra’s new suburban Los Angeles factory and at its Greenville, South Carolina, plant.
Beyond Tesla, companies ranging from Cummins, Volvo and Navistar to Toyota and Daimler are all developing different electric-drive systems in anticipation of demand for low- and no-emission heavy-duty vehicles.
Proterra has raised nearly $200 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, GM Ventures, BMW i Ventures and Al Gore's Generation Investment Management, and an IPO could come as early as 2018.
Popple said that after a decade of working in the electric vehicle space, the current level of activity and interest seems stronger than at any previous point, given that batteries have gotten better and cheaper.
"We'll see commercial applications popping up all over the place,” he said. “We've talked to a lot of companies and when you look at the specs of our battery pack it fits right between the chassis rails of a Class 8" semi, he said, declining to elaborate.
