Up Close with Edison Motors prototype Diesel Electric Hybrid Truck
'Topsy' on display with Chace Barber and the Edison Motors Team, as well as a special guest from the past.
Edison Motors, the small, scrappy, and fairly new truck manufacturing company out of Merritt, B.C., brought their prototype rig, Christened ‘Topsy’, to a small car and truck show near Vineland, Ontario this past weekend. Chace Barber and other members of Edison were on hand to tell the many curious fans who showed up all about their new truck.
Autonomous Truck(er)s/Voice Of GO(r)D made the 4 hour drive from Ithaca this past Saturday to go and check it all out, only one week after recording a second podcast interview with Mr Barber, where he filled us in on updates to the project’s progress.
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It was a cold and rainy fall Saturday, maybe not the best weather for an outdoor car and truck show. As myself and co-pilot Brandon Daily approached the facilities of V+R Recycling, a scrap yard which was today hosting this event, the line-up of well over a hundred vehicles up and down both shoulders of the road indicated a powerful motivator for show-goers to tolerate the conditions.
This was a fundraising event, featuring various cars and trucks, and put on by Deboss Garage, an engine swap, custom build, and special projects company based not far from the show site in Dunnville, Ontario. Deboss might be well known to readers of a more gearhead persuasion; like Edison Motors, they have quite large followings on YouTube and TikTok, where videos of their work generate quite a bit of interest.
Deboss’ mutant tank-pickup truck, the ‘Shermanator’, was on display only a few yards away from Edison’s prototype truck, and seemed to be the distant second place attraction, despite the various geographic and industry connections between the two.
The Shermanator being built on a Madill Swing Yarder chassis is one such connection. Those who have worked in west coast forestry will know Madill as the world’s premier manufacturer of mountain country logging equipment, with their headquarters in Nanaimo, B.C. An old friend of mine from New Zealand used to operate one such machine, and when the two of us were cruising around Vancouver Island way back in 2005, we stopped in to Madill at my Kiwi friends’ request, so as to tour the plant.
Another piece of British Columbia manufacturing history would be joining later.
The biggest draw to the show, of course, was Topsy, Edison Motors prototype diesel electric hybrid truck. Speaking with many in the crowd, I was not the only one who had driven some distance to see it - there were folks from Pennsylvania, the shores of Lake Huron in Western Ontario, numerous others from upstate New York, and many from north and east of Toronto, all who had made the trip to see this beast which has been buzzing across the internet for over a year.
The public face of Edison Motors, Mr Chace Barber, was on hand to field questions and promote the truck to whom he has seemingly devoted his life; at least until he marries fiancé Courtney, back home in B.C., who could not make the trip to Ontario, and is herself, no doubt, the proverbial “Woman behind the man behind the wheel” from the classic song by Red Sovine.
From noon until well past 6pm there was always a crowd around Chace, and he was only too happy to answer people’s questions and wax on all manner of technical specifications, government issues, plans for the truck, and Edison Motors.
The truck and some members of Edison’s team were in Ontario not to show the truck, which was an opportunity that happened to pop up, but rather to have Topsy undergo some engineering and testing not available in B.C.
Topsy, named in homage after an elephant who Thomas Edison was asked to “put down” via electrocution was trucked from Edison’s home shop in Merritt, B.C., to the facilities of Flodraulic, a major engineering firm based in Georgetown, Ontario, not too far outside of Toronto.
Flodraulic are assisting Edison with something Barber refers to as ‘throttle mapping’, as the E-axles which deliver power to the ground have instantly available and incredibly high torque; a good problem to have, but potentially damaging, depending on how the truck is driven.
As Barber describes the issue with all of that available torque and power -
” … instant torque, no boost, just flatline torque, and there’s no gears to shift so you’re just gone … I’ve never been able to spin tires like that on a truck, which is part of the reason for the engineering work we are doing (with Flodraulic) … putting in the throttle mapping, maybe putting in a few drive modes, different settings depending on what kind of load, configuration, or road conditions the truck will be operating in.”
Given the incredible torque and power available, Edison is mostly marketing the truck for vocational use, where over and above the savings in fuel and emissions, various other use cases for the hybrid platform come into play.
”We are moving forward with partners in 5 primary areas, where the diesel electric combo offers other advantages. One is cement mixing, where the mixer can run quietly in urban areas, thus allowing for round the clock construction in cities with evening noise limits. Another is for crane trucks, where the crane depends on power while holding loads in the air, sometimes for extended periods without moving during operations. Why have a 15 liter diesel engine running at high idle when the system can run off the batteries which only need occasional recharging?”
Barber, whose background includes many years of hauling logs down the mountainsides of interior British Columbia, is also focusing on logging. The potential energy embodied in high tonnage loads of logs rolling downhill, transformed by the E Axles regenerative braking into available electricity for later trucking on flat ground, or returning back up the mountain, is an obvious application.
Barber, asked about plans for ramping up production, indicated that they had a small handful of partners at present, who would entrust Edison with custom fitting trucks to each application, and then working with them to address any issues. In this process, Edison could learn from bugs, improve each model, and then move on to building “let’s say 30 more trucks, and then build on what we learn from those, and then move on to larger scale production.”
While we are thinking about British Columbia and the manufacture of trucks, prior to the show I had alerted Scott Paddock of Paddock Transport International, formerly known as Earl Paddock Transport, of the news that Edison would be in town with Topsy. Wouldn’t it be cool to have Scott’s old Hayes Clipper on site as well?
From 1970 to 1975, Scott’s father, Earl Paddock, in addition to running a successful trucking company, was also a dealer for Hayes Trucks, a Vancouver, B.C. based truck manufacturer that was later dissolved by Paccar Canada.
According to Scott, not only was the trucking industry regulated at the time, but the government also set quotas on how many brands of truck could be imported into the country.
”… the trade governors in Canada deemed no need for any more out of country trucks to be imported for the demand, so to make room for the Peterbilt brand to come to Canada, Paccar bought and closed Hayes Manufacturing.
We had a dealership in Stoney Creek and in Mississauga, and we sold 200 trucks the first year, which was impressive back then … Hayes had a good ‘tough truck’ reputation in Canada and the Western U.S., their slogan was ‘Built to Last' “
When Hayes were no more, The Paddocks took on the infamous Hayes Grizzly as the logo for their family trucking firm, which has been in business since 1957 and now boasts a massive warehouse complex, over 350 trucks and trailers, and, of special note to those whom follow this Substack, one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry.
Seeing the past and potential future of Canadian truck manufacturing like this was quite a blessing, especially as it was embodied by two companies with similar backgrounds.
The Late Earl Paddock started out as a one man and one truck operation in 1957, and through hard work, vision, and a dedication to the industry, he and his family, and now his grandchildren, have built up a great Canadian success story, and one of the marquee names in the trucking business.
Chace Barber and the rest of the guys at Edison, including Eric, Theron, Matt, and Luke, who all came with Chace and Topsy to this show, are likewise applying similar vision and dedication in building a truck to bridge the gap between the typical diesel platforms of today, and the electrically powered future our utopian overlords wish to see.
If you would like to hear more about Edison Motors, in the form of deep dive, detailed discussions about the technology they are employing and plans for their trucks, please listen to the following two podcasts where I interview Chace Barber -
The folks at Overdrive Magazine liked this first interview so much, they included portions of it in their own show -
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