Okay, so the headline is a mouthful. That repetitive “T” may not roll well off one’s tongue. But, the fact is that I’ve been talking about the Vision Industries Tyrano fuel cell plug-in hybrid truck since May 2009.
The original idea was to test and rollout the truck in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California in order to help cut down on smog in those locations. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger even gave the Tyrano his blessing and FedEx has started testing this same vehicle as well.
Now, Visions Industries has expanded the scope of its hydrogen truck offerings. Teaming up with Capacity of Texas, Incorporated, Vision Industries is producing the world’s first ZETT (zero emissions terminal tractor).
The ZETT will not be a recreation of the wheel, however, as Vision will not have to build this tractor from the ground up. Instead they will be using the Capacity of Texas PHETT (plug-in hybrid electric terminal tractor – the world’s first) as the jumping off point.
The Vision ZETT will be able to work two 8-hour shifts before refueling and when it does come time to refuel, this will take only 15 minutes. This is a huge advantage over any battery only terminal trucks.
With tougher U. S. emissions standards for trucks expected to be implemented by the government this year, Visions Industries is at the leading edge of helping specific industries comply with these anticipated standards.
Kevin
It keeps getting better and better with these guys at Vision Industries. The Port of LA and Long Beach are making them the poster child of how to do “green” things with big rigs. It’s only a matter of time before their ability to produce the goods is at bottleneck. That’s a good problem to have. I plan on test driving the Tyrano this week. I’ll let you know my thoughts.
No reply on the test drive, interesting. By the way, the Tyranno was not a ground up project. It is clearly based on a Freightliner chassis. So where is the Tyrano at now in testing. Nothing at all on it since the ‘hype’ in early 2010.
You can keep up on what is happening with the Vision Tyrano on this page: