Bob Lutz is undoubtedly a pioneer within the automotive world, however typically even the greats get it mistaken. Generally they get it so mistaken the product they give you is downright irrelevant and is forgotten by the annals of time. Take the By way of Motors VTrux. Do you bear in mind the VTrux? Me neither, however Huge Bob was behind it over a decade in the past, and due to YouTuber and good friend of the present Getting older Wheels, we’re in a position to get an up-close take a look at what this international truck was all about.
What we’ve bought right here with the VTrux is definitely one thing that’s a bit forward of its time since it’s a plug-in hybrid pickup truck that debuted all the best way again in 2011. That’s over a decade earlier than automobiles like that may begin to hit the mass market. Hell, Chevy didn’t come out with an electrical Silverado till a number of months in the past. Mainly what By way of and Lutz did was take a bone-stock Chevy Silverado, Specific or Suburban, rip out a complete of of its mechanical guts, and stick a sequence hybrid system in them. It sounds good on paper for positive, however they by no means actually caught on due to excessive costs and lackluster efficiency. I see the imaginative and prescient, however the expertise simply wasn’t there but in 2011.
Robert Dunn of Getting older Wheels ended up with the VTrux after a viewer requested him to assist repair is ailing truck regardless of the very fact it had comparatively low miles and wasn’t very outdated. After only a few years, the VTrux wasn’t in a position to dwell as much as By way of’s guarantees.
Dunn goes into a reasonably deep rationalization of how By way of takes a traditional Silverado and turns it right into a VTrux. Mainly, the corporate purchased a thousand-ish half-ton base Silverados with the 4.3-liter Vortec V6 that places out 297 horsepower and 330 lb-ft of torque. By way of then eliminated the transmission, and as an alternative, it put a 201 horsepower electrical generator and an electrical motor that makes 254 horsepower and 306 lb-ft of torque. By way of then bolts a cleverly packaged 24 kWh battery again behind these parts. All in all, this setup is one way or the other much less highly effective than the 4.3-liter V6 by itself. That’s some spectacular work. By way of claimed that the truck may do 0-60 in 9.7 seconds, however that by no means actually occurred. Just a few years later, and the truck is even slower.
Dunn goes on to clarify the way it works. Mainly, the V6 acted as a gasoline generator, which drove the electrical generator behind it. That electrical generator then added energy to the batteries and supplied energy to the 120-volt and 140-volt plugs out again. The aforementioned electrical motor – dwelling the place the transmission was once – linked to the switch case, which spins the driveshaft right into a differential and finally reaches the wheels. Whereas kind of neat, this was not precisely an environment friendly design. There’s a purpose automakers attempt to put the electrical motors as near the drive wheels as potential.
All of this janky electrical goodness didn’t come low-cost. First, you needed to get a 2014 Silverado WT which price over $50,000 in at present’s cash. You then add the entire VTrux bits, and immediately you’ve bought a 2014 base Silverado that prices $76,000 – practically $101,000 at present. DAMN.
This entire setup was initially marketed with 40 miles of pure EV vary and as much as 400 miles of mix vary, however after 10 years and 47,000 miles, the By way of Dunn examined can’t get near these numbers. He discovered that regardless that the gasoline engine isn’t driving the wheels, it nonetheless revs up and down seemingly randomly, that means gasoline financial system with the engine working is barely higher than an everyday Silverado. It additionally was solely getting about 20 miles of electrical vary. Brutal. He famous that the battery wasn’t in a position to put out full energy for a really very long time, that means that you simply’ll really lose some pace if you happen to’re driving up a hill.
Even at the very best of instances, this conversion was kind of janky. Dunn identified a complete lot of stuff left over from earlier than the truck was transformed like cruise management buttons that don’t fear, gearchange buttons on the column that do nothing and the very fact the truck’s onboard pc typically freaks out and doesn’t know what’s occurring.
The By way of VTrux is definitely an attention-grabbing piece of automotive historical past, nevertheless it was removed from Bob Lutz’s greatest effort.
