Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than It Uses

Electric vehicles are everywhere now. It’s more than just Leafs, Teslas, and a wide variety of electric bikes. It’s also trains, busses, and in this case, gigantic dump trucks. This truck in particular is being put to work at a mine in Switzerland, and as a consequence of having an electric drivetrain is actually able to produce more power than it consumes. (Google Translate from Portugese)

This isn’t some impossible perpetual motion machine, either. The dump truck drives up a mountain with no load, and carries double the weight back down the mountain after getting loaded up with lime and marl to deliver to a cement plant. Since electric vehicles can recover energy through regenerative braking, rather than wasting that energy as heat in a traditional braking system, the extra weight on the way down actually delivers more energy to the batteries than the truck used on the way up the mountain.

Oh yes, very clever.

What are you going to do when you've carried all of the mountain's top down?

Where's your fancy perpetual motion dump trunk then, smarty pants?!

One thought on “Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than It Uses

  1. Tony P.

    Back during the 1978-79 oil crisis, the NSF (I think) solicited ideas from the public for energy conservation/generation ideas. I vaguely remember reading an article about it, which included some of those “ideas”. The most memorable one: building “rock wheels” in the Rocky Mountains. You know, like water wheels, only using rocks …

    –TP

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