With its electroluminescent paintwork, Renault Trucks’ E-Tech T certainly stands out from the crowd, but as PowerTorque’s European Correspondent Will Shiers discovers, it didn’t need a gimmick to make it shine.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to write driving impressions about electric trucks, quite simply because they’re all so similar. I mean there’s only so many ways you can say the word ‘quiet’.
My thesaurus suggests ‘peaceful’, ‘reticent’, and ‘muted’ as good alternatives, but I’ve used them all time and time again. In fact, I’m conscious that I’ve used ‘stealthily’ far too frequently too.
However, Renault Trucks has come to the rescue. Seemingly aware of this predicament, and presumably to make its new E-Tech T electric prime mover stand out from the crowd and give journalists like me something different to write about, it came up with a rather bonkers idea. It gave one an electroluminescent paint job, called it ‘Echo Diamond’, and took it on a 10,000km tour of Europe.
I catch up with this one-off zero-tailpipe-emission E-Tech T at the Renault Trucks Scotland dealership in Bellshill, Glasgow, Scotland, where it has stopped off for 48 hours. The previous day it had been made available for potential customers to check out, and now it’s my turn to get behind the wheel before it continues its whistlestop tour of the UK.
This E-Tech T is a big deal for Renault Trucks, which prides itself on being ‘a leader of electric mobility innovation’. This is its first battery-powered prime mover and means the French truck maker now has the widest range of battery-electric commercial vehicles on the market, from the 650kg e-cargo bike through to the E-Tech T 6×2 44-tonner.
In fact, the only truck to escape electrification so far is the T High, but that’s likely to change in 2025 when Renault gets an eAxle. This will free up chassis space for additional batteries, creating a long-haul truck with a potential 600km range.
It’s fair to say the Echo Diamond looks like nothing else on the road, on account of its unique paintwork, which illuminates when subjected to an electric stimulus (see box item overleaf).
The self-proclaimed ‘world’s coolest truck’, not only celebrates Renault Trucks’ first electric prime mover, but gives a nod to the manufacturer’s 130th anniversary too.
Beneath all that razzmatazz is a regular T cab, albeit with one significant difference. Unlike its diesel-propelled equivalents, the E-Tech T features a nose, which protrudes by 115mm. This gives the truck a slight aerodynamic advantage, and more importantly allows it to take advantage of the latest European masses and dimensions regulations.
While this 4×2 version has a 3,900mm wheelbase, 6×2 variants are longer, and require this frontal extension in order to comply with length regulations.
Looking around the truck’s exterior, another difference are the side skirts and fold-down catwalk access steps, which are a Volvo Group product. While you can cut steps into a diesel tank, this isn’t possible with a battery, hence the set-up. The CCS charging inlet is located on the truck’s off-side, independent of whether it’s a left- or right-hand-drive vehicle.
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