General Motors (GM) announces a plan for a zero-emission vehicle fleet through the year 2023. GM makes a commitment to debut two new all-electric vehicles within the next 18 months. These will be based on the learnings from the Chevy Bolt EV car. The company also says to expect a total of 20 new electric vehicles through the year 2023. Why are we talking about electrification of cars on a site dedicated to trucks? It’s because the SURUS heavy duty truck project was part of the announcement.
What is SURUS? The acronym stands for Silent Utility Rover Universal Superstructure. GM says “[SURUS is] a fuel cell powered, four-wheel steer concept vehicle on a heavy-duty truck frame that’s driven by two electric motors.” GM continues to say that SURUS is based on a flexible architecture that could serve as a delivery vehicle, truck, or an ambulance.
GM’s press release revealed only one image (the one you see above), and no further information was announced. This is intriguing news that we do not yet know much about. It’s not a surprise that the SURUS concept truck will be based on a hydrogen fuel-cell technology. GM has been working on this technology for years, and recently showed the Colorado ZH2 military truck concept that is powered by a fuel-cell.
The “R” in SURUS stands for Rover. We do not have an official word on this, but could it mean that a SURUS truck would support autonomous and/or remote-controlled modes? We will have to wait and see.
The fuel-cell electric power plant allows the vehicle to be quickly refueled and have an extended operating range. On the flip side, the fuel-cell approach relies on a network of hydrogen refueling stations. At this time, California and New York are the states with any consumer-based hydrogen refueling infrastructure.
GM sees the future of all-electric vehicles with two sources of power: one is based on a batter (similar to the Chevy Bolt EV), and the other is based on the hydrogen fuel-cell technology.
GM says that more details on the SURUS project will be available in about a week. We will have all of the details here at TFLtruck.com.
Here is a detailed look at the 2017 GMC Sierra 1500 eAssist gas/electric Hybrid.
