"If anything can provide a quick reading on the reliability and true cost of hybrid battery packs, OTR trucking can. They're racking up the miles, day in and day out. It may help push innovation as well."
Indeed......but the fundamental problem is a big one. For an electric battery pack would have to be big, but more importantly would have to deliver massive currents to an electric assist motor - which would have to be significant to make a difference.
Color me skeptical on this. In rocky mountain states, the battery pack (unless very large) would quickly become exhausted even on some of the not-so-big pulls, resulting in underpowered trucks, with additional weight of dead batteries, crawling even slower than conventional trucks do today over highway mountain passes.
Dennis Weaver wouldn't have any problem outrunning one of these in his Dodge Dart.
Hybrids designs don't like towing things......hard to do an analysis based on what is provided in the article though...
Except that he's no longer with us.
What if the setup were really more like a diesel electric locomotive, with the addition of the battery pack to recapture waste energy, from regenerative braking and/or periods of low power demand, such as idling or descending a grade?