Currently in Australia, is an Isuzu concept ‘Walk-through Van’, designed as an electric development truck from Isuzu in Japan. This walk around video was filmed at the Tokyo Motor Show a couple of years ago.
This concept truck is part of Isuzu’s plan to develop carbon neutral trucks. Internal combustion engines (ICE) will continue to be developed, but only as a bridge technology to zero emissions by 2050.
By 2040, Isuzu expects to have a full carbon neutral range available to truck buyers around the world. This requires an acceleration in electric truck sales, starting in 2022 in some markets, but not in Australia quite yet.
“Isuzu Australia is laser-focussed on delivering an OEM electric platform, that builds on our core promise of ‘reliability is everything’,” says Grant Cooper, Isuzu Chief of Strategy. “We will be leveraging off our strengths of our dealer network, advanced safety features and placing the customer at the centre of our approach.”
The fully electric concept truck is fitted with a battery with a density of 260 Watt hours/kg available today, but this is likely to rise year-on-year and the motor produces 150kW of power. The design has batteries mounted outside the chassis rails, removing the need for the engine cover in the middle of the cabin, and enabling a walk through design, where the driver simply stands up and walks through the rear of the cabin to the cargo area.
When looking at the trucks available to buy now, the big ticket included in the launch of the new N Series is the inclusion of an Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). This includes emergency collision avoidance braking, lane departure warning, distance monitoring, which controls the adaptive cruise control, plus a feature we have not come across before, the Traffic Movement Warning system.
These systems rely on the Hitachi stereo camera system mounted just inside the centre of the windscreen, on the top of the dash. The stereo system can detect speed and distance data about objects in front of the truck and send this data through to the safety systems controllers.
