08 Oct Ecolution kWh Moves Clean Energy into Long-haul Trucking
Across American highways are big rigs hauling goods and connecting the dots where rail no longer reaches. Ecolution kWh is a startup company founded by Craig Bouchard, Johanne Medina CEO, and Johnny Then-Gautier, CTO, is moving clean energy into long-haul trucking. Bouchard has discovered a way for each trailer pulled by a truck to become a mini powerplant that generates electricity. In short, he has created an opportunity to turn the fleets of big rigs into a moveable electrical grid. It is not just any grid, but one that can replace the rickety physical grid that currently supports America’s power network.
Bouchard is no stranger to success. He has founded three metals companies, all of which were successful, including Esmark, which hit $4 billion in revenue in just five years.
Usable Energy from Big Rigs Towing a Trailer.
Ecolution kWh is a company that has opened the door to a brand new concept. It has successfully created a way to collect the kinetic energy created when a semi pulls a trailer. Currently, all of that energy is just released and is unusable. That’s a fact that is about to change. Here’s how. First, if you capture the kinetic energy and convert it to usable electricity, which Ecolution kWh does, you can power the very EV semi-truck that pulls the trailer. That process does several things. First, it extends the range of the truck by upwards of 30%. Second, it opens the door for the population of EV rigs to become more prominent on highways.
If you consider the variations in truck and trailer set up, you begin to see more opportunities. Refrigerated trailers could use the electricity to run their refrigerator unit. If fossil fuels power the truck pulling the fridge, the truck uses less diesel because the refrigeration system power comes from the energy created by the trailer rather than the truck’s fuel supply. Take the process a step further and consider all the trailers returning to their base with excess electricity on board. That energy could transfer to the parent company by merely plugging the trailer into a transfer station. What that means for the company is that its fleet of trucks helps generate the energy it needs to do business. That process represents a decrease in the cost of energy for that company, and the process occurs simply by delivering goods.
That set of circumstances transforms the standard semi and trailer into a mobile power plant that can off-load that power wherever a transfer station exists.
Solving the EV Truck-Trailer Issue
The founders at Ecolution kWh originally began discovering how to improve the fit of Electric Vehicle (EV) within the trucking industry. The industry is rife with the opportunity to enhance EV trucking. It faces many obstacles, one of which is range + recharge time. Trucking is a process that requires products to reach their destination quickly—stopping to recharge for 10-12 hours delays that process and causes problems on the end-consumer level. EV trucking represents only a small portion of the trucks on the road, and that percentage is lagging. Other obstacles include the high price for an EV truck in comparison to a vehicle that runs on fossil fuels. There are also not enough recharging stations, and that limits where an EV truck can go. Ecolution sought to correct these issues and capitalize on the opportunities within the trucking industry. Their answer is a combination of software and components protected by patents and held under the marketing brand – MARS – Mobile Active Response System.
Their approach is not to create trailers that convert kinetic energy into usable electricity. It also includes a methodology to reduce the unit’s cost, including the batteries, which are often the most expensive part of the system. By extending the range of EV semi-trucks and decreasing the amount of time needed to recharge them, Ecolution kWh removes many of the hurdles that EV trucks face in a high-demand industry. If they can hit a lower cost unit that is equal or greater in function than traditional semi-trucks, then the company is set to radically change the face of trucking, not just in America, but worldwide. Couple that with kinetic trailers’ ability to provide energy to companies and even the masses, and the potential here is off the scale.
They moved passed just solving issues with trucking to solving problems that the whole nation faces – producing clean energy and replacing electricity by burning fossil fuels. It is an opportunity to transform highly polluting industries into a cleaner, greener, and more sustainable industries. Imagine a fleet of trucks that produce their clean energy and share that with consumers. That idea is here, and Ecolution kWh is positioning itself as the focal energy transfer. Power plants do not need to be stationary, overly large, or supported by an infrastructure that is revenue heavy and costly, and remain heavy polluters. The MARS version is mobile, without infrastructure, and moves electrical production to virtually a zero-emission process.