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This Self-Powered Trailer Can be Hand-Guided to Your Truck

Range Energy's trailers also save 30-40% on fuel

By Rain Noe - November 21, 2023

in Cars | Tech

The established system of attaching a trailer to your truck is, you back the truck up to the trailer, getting the tow ball as close to the hitch as possible. Old hands do this with rearview mirrors and experience; newer trucks have backup cameras. But in the future, backing up to a trailer is likely to be a thing of the past. Instead we'll have self-powered electric trailers that you can simply guide to your truck.

A company called Range Energy is developing just that. their Mule 2 prototype, a dual-axle gooseneck trailer, features a "shopping cart mode" where the trailer moves itself in the desired direction while you effortlessly guide it by hand. In this demonstration an employee walks it over to a waiting pickup:

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Freaking incredible. A good chunk of trailering is working out where you can and can't back it up to, then executing. Range Energy's system removes an entire set of logistics from the process.

The bigger picture is the fuel savings in transit. Range Energy, which is long-term targeting the 18-wheeler market, says their self-powered trailers will save 30-40% on diesel costs when hooked up to a conventional cab; from an energy perspective, it's essentially as if the cab is driving with nothing hooked up behind it.

Here's how it works:

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Ryan Cee

a year ago

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Battery weight reduces load capacity, while drive wheels being added to the trailer introduces "exciting" new control issues. The video also acts like electric trucks are going to be a thing at some time whereas even with optimistic future storage capacity design, the weight of batteries will still be so great as to completely supplant the entire load capacity and negate any practical use.

It may be useful if reconfigured as a driver-less yard system though.

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- Dee An
  
  Ryan Cee
  
  a year ago
  
  Z
  
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  Have you any sources for your assertion that electric trucks will never have any practical use?
  And are you aware that Volvo has already sold 5,000 electric trucks?
  https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a43917840/volvo-electric-truck-lineup/
  
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