What is Vion?
Over the past few decades, there has been a constant tightening of US and Western European regulations concerning environmentalfriendliness in relation to truck emissions. The reason for the adoption of the new standards is not only the declared struggle for the preservation of the environment, but also indirect promotion of sales of new equipment from local manufacturers, by means of creating barriers and diĆculties for the entry of imported cars from competing countries.
All this has led to the fact that nowadays, the technical capabilities to reduce external emissions of internal combustion engines (ice) have become nearly exhausted. In addition, worldwide, including in North America and the United States, there is a trend of constant growth in the volume and share of main road transport in the total volume of cargo transportation, accompanied in the long term by increasing price of hydrocarbon fuel and a shortage of long-dictanse drivers. The share of diesel fuel, maintenance (MAINTENANCE) and repair (TR) reaches 70% of the annual operating costs of traditional cars with internal combustion engines. A possible real reduction in these indicators will mean considerable economy for hehicle owners and for the human society as a whole. These long-term trends in the market of road transport have l resulted in the emergence of various alternative proposals, such as hybrid cars, cars running on natural gas or biofuel, and recently – electric cars.
This is due to two factors. First, according to the manufacturers, they were able to overcome many of the disadvantages of electric cars that they had experienced earlier, and in the first place, considerable weight and low capacity batteries. So, at the presentation in November 2017 of its electric tractor, Tesla announced that its electric truck on one charge can travel up to 800 km (500 miles), and the time of full charging is only 30-50 minutes. And, secondly, the main cargo electric vehicle means nearly complete abcense of emissions in the environment, i.e. the highest environmental friendliness, unprecedented eĆciency, reaching 95%, simplicity of design, ease of maintenance, increased inter-service mileage, low noise level, the possibility of working on cheap electricity in comparison with the traditional fuel price.
The essence of the project is to create a chain of specialized electric charging stations for freight electric transport in the United States (in the future, the list of territories may be expanded in the framework of the project).