To validate electric powertrain technology in the highest and most remote environments, the PeakEvolution team climbed the world's highest active volcano this month to set a world record.The team's initial goal was to set a car's highest altitude record, but after competing against the Porsche team, the Peak team ended up easily setting an electric vehicle's highest altitude record, well over 6,000 meters (19,685 feet).
That's an impressive second place, especially considering they rely entirely on solar power to keep their heavy-duty all-terrain electric truck charged and climbing.
The three-person Swiss PeakEvolution team set out more than five years ago with unique talents and ambitions. Patrik Koller, David Koller and David Pröschel were determined to create a fully electric utility vehicle for all-terrain operations in municipal services, mining, forestry and agriculture. In 2018, they established DDP Innovations in Sevenen, a small town on the border of Switzerland and Lichtenstein, and set out to develop a more robust and durable all-electric machine.
DDP has developed the scalable Terren electric drive system for work trucks with a gross vehicle weight between 7,000 and 15,000 kilograms (15,000 and 33,000 pounds) using electric components from well-known market players such as Bosch and Eco-Volta. They installed a 320-horsepower (240-kilowatt) twin-motor Terren electric drive system on Swiss company AebiSchmidt's VT450 Vario Transporter truck and added a sandwich composite box to the chassis to transport equipment and provide shelter from inclement weather. A 90 kWh lithium-ion battery is mounted lower in the center and provides enough power for a range of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles).
As avid mountain climbers, it was natural for the DDP trio to think of testing and promoting their prototype through world altitude records, and formed the Mountain Evolution team around this goal. They note that previous records and attempts have been conducted using internal combustion engines, which lose power at high altitudes and have limited fuel supplies. They argue that electric vehicles can circumvent these problems by eliminating the altitude-related power losses of internal combustion engines and using readily available solar energy for fuel. In 2019, the two adventurous entrepreneurs explored the mountains of Ojos del Salado volcano and identified a route they believed could support vehicle climbing.
In October this year, with the help of global logistics experts and summit expedition sponsor Gebrüder Weiss, the DDPTerren truck set off for Chile. The truck travels from Switzerland to Rotterdam, where it is loaded onto a ship for shipment to Chile. After arriving in Chile, the team used a low-bed truck to transport the truck to the Atacama region of Chile.
After acclimating to the Maricunga Salt Flat at an altitude of 3,400 meters (11,155 feet), the team drove the Terren prototype towards the target at an altitude of 6,893 meters (22,615 feet). The crux of the puzzle is that truck batteries lose range hundreds of kilometers away from the grid. They rely on roof- and ground-mounted solar panels to achieve this, with 42 square meters (452 square feet) of panels delivering a peak output of 7.4kWp, with an estimated charging time of five hours and a range of 150 kilometers (93 miles).
During the expedition, Romain Dumas drove a specially developed 911 off-road vehicle to reach the highest altitude of a land vehicle of 6,734 meters (22,093 feet), surpassing the 2020 record of 6,694 meters (21,962 feet) set by a pair of Unimog off-road vehicles. In late November, it climbed more than 6,000 meters (19,685 feet), surpassing the previous EV world altitude record, and a week later it set the official EV benchmark of 6,500 meters (21,325 feet) on the west ridge of Ojos del Salado, within 250 meters (820 feet) of Porsche's land car top record.
Patrik Koller, CEO and developer of PeakEvolution, said: "This is a record not only for this technology and our many years of research work, but also for the future of transportation. We hope that this success will attract more attention to alternative drive technologies and their applications in mining and other demanding transportation tasks."
With the record officially in place, DDP plans to continue testing, development and validation to achieve commercialization goals.