Wished I knew of your thing with electric cars earlier in the year and the mechanics at baker brought it up sooner.
The one thing I know for sure is that the program was axed after 911. About all purchases of equipment were haulted and they downsized after 911.
I do not have any info on what the trucks looked like, but they did say they were converted. They took an existing truck and made it electric with adding batteries, the electric motor, controller. Not uncommon, they take stock trucks, ford f250-750 without a bed and make it a bucket truck, so its not unbelievable that they took this task on.
I have no clue about the truck. I want to say they converted some mail jeeps like you see in small neighborhoods. The guy who was giving me the lecture was working on the tower in a bucket van and was pointing out where they put the parts in the truck. I do not know if this is really it or if he was just using the inside of that van as an example.
Myself my only experience is with electric wheelchairs and an electric scooter. First off a real disability product is 1000 times better than anything you see in a mart store for the disabled customer to use. They are faster, stronger, more comfortable, stable and have a longer range. I have used a few and its my experience most are nearly dead or die while in operation in sams or walmart. THey are slow and not to easy to move around a store. With an electric wheelchair with its tank like operation you have more power, but it can be a hand full on cross slopes. They hav eless range than a scooter. A scooter is like a car, rear drive with an axle and one motor and you point and shoot. They go faster, easier to steer, but can be hard to make a U turn in a tight area.
Although I have run out of power a few times some with advance warning others none at all, its not hard to get a push. Sit to let the batteries freshen up or plug into a charger for a few minutes to travel on. Amazing how a few minutes can give you an hour of run time.
As for the suck amps show and site. I never seen the show, but it looks like something I would be interested in. I read the site and although it looks like its really performs, I wonder what the real world range is, capacity to haul and the charger(s) used. From what I can gather its a 4 wheel drive truck with three electric motors. One for each rear wheel and one hooked to a VW transmission to power the front wheels. The only thing that sets up a warning flag for me is the fast those transmissions, the 005 or 003 series are know to strip 5th gear in the newer vws that have that flat 15 degree v6engine. From what it looks like they just stick it in second or third gear and go, not anything on shifting it.
As for the electric motors, I know you can push one to get 400% the rating, but you can also fry it, demagnatise the marnets or pop one off the inside of the housing. I saw something abour series wound motors, so maybe those do not use PM, but have built in electric ones like an older style car starter motor. THere is a wheelchair manufacture teftec who made a special transmission to steer the chair that can handle 3500 horsepower and uses 200+ amp controllers to drive it. I think its an eight pole motor and for demostration purposes they row a city bus with it. He has had guys ruin a few motors in the chair.
