MILFORD, Mich. \u2014 The U.S. Army is wading into the murky waters of\u00a0fielding electric vehicles<\/a>, and industry stands ready to make that happen, but it\u2019s been difficult for the experienced commercial world to convince the hesitant service to take the plunge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the last several years, the Army\u00a0ramped up efforts to strategize a potential transition away from classic fuels like JP-8 to power its vehicles<\/a>, allowing industry to bring working vehicles to demonstrate what is possible today and in the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But there is still little funding applied to efforts to find alternative fuel to power its current and future combat and tactical vehicle fleets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At the beginning of June,\u00a0GM Defense<\/a>, whose parent company General Motors is a global leader in commercial electric vehicles, hosted Army officials at its Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan. The service officials drove the new\u00a0U.S. Army Infantry Squad Vehicle<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 produced by GM Defense \u2014 through an off-road course, climbing steep, rocky inclines, zipping around tight corners, and rumbling over gravel and plowing through mud. Then they traded that for a fully electric version to consider the performance differences.<\/p>\n When it comes to combat vehicles like Abrams tanks, Stryker combat vehicles and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, \u201cI\u2019m not sure we\u2019re going fully electric any time soon,\u201d Brig. Gen. Glenn Dean, the program executive officer for ground combat systems, told Defense News in an interview in Warren, about a 50-minute drive from\u00a0GM\u2019s proving ground<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMaybe for robotic platforms. That might be the first case,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s about size and weight. If you took the amount of batteries with current technology that you would need to move an Abrams tank purely electrically, it\u2019s bigger than the tank, so we have a packaging and storage problem when it comes to pure electric.\u201d<\/p>\n Interested in how energy and the environment impact military operations? Click here for more.<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dean said the Army might initially prefer a hybrid power option. \u201cWe\u2019ve looked at that every couple of years. The question is: Are we there yet? I suspect we may be at the point where hybrid electric is probably there. You\u2019re certainly seeing it broadly enough in the commercial space that there\u2019s probably enough power density, can probably be packaged. Whether it\u2019s durable enough? That\u2019s still a question.\u201d<\/p>\n While fully electric combat vehicles may be a tougher sell to the Army, the tactical wheeled vehicle fleet might be a promising place to start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think tactical\u2019s going to get there before us,\u201d Dean said. \u201cJust the technical challenges are less; the commonality with commercial applications is greater.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That GM Defense converted its Infantry Squad Vehicle into a fully electric vehicle in just 12 weeks is evidence of that possibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company quietly sent that vehicle to\u00a0a demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia<\/a>, in May, as the Army explored what exists among possible industry partners that could lead to the development of a base concept and inform requirements for a future Electric Light Reconnaissance Vehicle, or eLRV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Such a vehicle could be the service\u2019s first manned electric vehicle,\u00a0should it receive proper funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n While a list of participants is not public, Defense News learned that, among roughly 10 vendors, Polaris and Lordstown Motors brought vehicles to the demonstration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n GM Defense plans to base its eLRV design off its yet-to-be publicly debuted Hummer EV chassis, a vehicle of which the company is hoping to build millions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Hummer EV features a 200-kilowatt hour battery using Ultium technology. It has three drive units and is a 1,000-horsepower vehicle. It also features four-wheel electronic power steering. The electric Hummer can get 90 minutes of drive time for 10 minutes of charging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Electric battery advancements will allow the vehicle to conduct silent infiltration and watch at the tactical edge, and could run on its battery power for days rather than minutes, GM Defense\u2019s new president, Steve duMont, told Defense News at its Milford proving ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company is investing more than $27 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles overall, which surpasses its gas and diesel product investment.<\/p>\n Defense News drove both the Infantry Squad Vehicle and the electric version on the same course Army officials traversed earlier in the day in a separate demonstration on June 2.<\/p>\n Is fully electric a bridge too far?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n GM spent time at its electrification summit with Army officials trying to convince them to skip hybrid and charge toward fully electric options.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Echoing Dean, other Army leaders, including Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, recently said procuring fully electric vehicles for its fleet of larger combat vehicles and for the smaller Joint Light Tactical Vehicle is unlikely in the near term.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a recent Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing, McConville said it\u2019s far more likely the service will choose hybrid options that can cut fuel consumption by 25 percent or reduce power consumption when a vehicle is idling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But GM Defense sees the hybrid approach as a belt-and-suspenders solution, resulting in a suboptimal architecture due to the need for an internal combustion motor on the front end. That design harms battery power because the vehicle must also accommodate an engine, therefore also harming electric efficiency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n GM Defense plans to offer a purely electric vehicle for eLRV. But one option, to add a layer of comfort, would be to include an electric-powered range extender \u2014 \u201ca smoking patch,\u201d as one company battery engineer put it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Army is testing the waters with electrification of vehicle components to start, Michael Cadieux, the director of the Army\u2019s Combat Capabilities Development Command\u2019s Ground Vehicle Systems Center, said during a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe see some technology that\u2019s available very soon, such as anti-idle technology, on our systems,\u201d he said, to include such technology for the JLTV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The logistics burden<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n But even with the benefits, there are still major hurdles the Army is working through when it comes to the logistics of fueling vehicles in the field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe huge challenge at the end of the day: It takes X amount of energy to move your vehicle to point A to point B. Then you need X amount of energy again to move again. Where does it come from?\u201d Dean asked. \u201cI can drive a Tesla 300 miles, but I\u2019m expecting the Tesla charging station at that point. Where are those charging stations on the battlefield? Do you have to bring them with you, or are you going to expect them to be there? How big are they? They\u2019re probably not going to be there in all the places, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Historically, it takes an Army tank battalion roughly 30 minutes to refuel on the move, Dean noted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Added Cadieux: \u201cWhile there are certainly some similarities in commercial and military requirements, we are mindful that the Army faces unique operational challenges, compared to those in the commercial market.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThese challenges include the need to operate in extreme combat environments, widely ranging temperatures, and requirements for heavy armor and add-on mission packages,\u201d he explained. \u201cIn assessing the operational usability by the military of commercially available solutions and various hybrid, hybrid plug-in, and all-electric vehicles, we recognized two significant challenges: the need for a mobile and deployable recharging infrastructure, and greater battery energy density and endurance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At the electrification summit, \u201ca good amount of time\u201d was spent running through how to solve those logistical quandaries, duMont told Defense News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very clear \u2014 if they\u2019re going to be in their home base on the power grid \u2014 we can do that today,\u201d he said, likening fast-charging stations to gas pumps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But when you take a vehicle into the tactical environment, \u201cthat\u2019s where the challenge is presented,\u201d he added. \u201cThe way we\u2019re looking at it is we will just move charging capability in a similar manner to the way that the Army currently moves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In some cases, the Army would set up a refueling area, or fly to a location to charge vehicles, duMont said, or the service could even airdrop batteries. The batteries are durable, he noted, as they have survived crash tests in commercial development.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt is a transformation. It won\u2019t necessarily be a huge change: You\u2019re just going to take something that\u2019s less volatile, which batteries are less volatile than moving a bunch of liquid JP-8 around,\u201d he said, noting that batteries are lighter and smaller than the fuel. \u201cI don\u2019t want to underwhelm; it is a transformation. But at the same time, the government-industry team working together can solve that challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another concern is whether batteries can survive the beating the Army might put them through on the battlefield, including exposure to extreme temperatures. The service has operated a great deal in hot desert environments and expects to increase its operational footprint in the\u00a0extreme cold of the Arctic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/jeep.jpg\")
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