The electric truck conversion running on waste vegetable oil and old Tesla parts

The 50kW DC Biofil charger in the small community of Caiguna in Western Australia runs on waste vegetable cooking oil, and is a critical part of charging infrastructure for any EV journey across the Nullarbor Plain.

Jon Edwards, from Perth, designed and built the unit as a service to the EV community, and he runs another unit for public charging at his O’Connor workshop.

Edwards also has a truck mounted mobile unit to support his other major interest – Australia’s only fully compliant EV rally car, the TOCEVA Tesla Performance Model 3 which has a full internal roll cage.

The truck-mounted mobile unit is used to charge the Model 3 during rallies, but Jon became tired of comments that seemed to find fault in the fact that thought the mobile charger might run on waste vegetable oil, the truck carrying it needed diesel.

So Jon decided to do something about it, and make the entire enterprise carbon neutral by converting the truck to electric, using old Tesla electric motors and batteries.

With in-principle approval from the Department of Transport and a pending final engineering certificate, Jon has stripped all the ICE components (including transmission) out of a new Mitsubishi Fuso 110kW turbo intercooled 4 cylinder diesel 5 tonne truck.

He is replacing them with a 310 kW 3 phase AC rear motor from a Tesla model S and a 75kWh battery from a Tesla Model 3 long range, both second hand.

Jon is not aware of anyone else using this combination in a conversion and notes that it raises some challenges, although his cost target after selling the ICE bits should still be around half the cost of a commercial EV truck.

The Tesla motor is fitted sideways under the cab with only one of its two axles powering the truck via a drive shaft to the truck’s rear differential. The plan is to lock the other axle and change the gear ratio in the engine’s differential to roughly halve the truck’s potential top speed and double the torque.

The battery is well protected under the front part of the rear tray which needed to be raised 130mm.

The truck’s radiator and intercooler will be repurposed to cool the motor/ inverter and battery respectively and the power steering, air conditioner and vacuum brake pumps will all be driven electrically. The 12V battery will be retained but powered directly from the main battery as there will be no alternator.

Jon was aware that the Tesla battery’s 11kW charge port wasn’t working and had a cunning solution.

The truck will carry a small Biofil 3 phase generator with around 10kW output, hard wired to the battery through 3 single phase external chargers (one per phase) with 400V DC outputs for direct charging at 9.9kW when stationary, but also able to reduce draw on the battery and function as as a range extender when driving.

With this arrangement he is hoping for a range of 280-300km. At some point he may look at installing a CCS port so that the battery can be charged from external chargers, but initially the entire setup will be carbon neutral, only requiring waste vegetable oil to run.

When fully set up to support the EV rally car, the truck will carry a 120kWh battery running an 80kW CCS charger with total weight around 1600kg.

This battery can be charged from a number of sources, including from a 32A outlet on the truck’s small Biofil unit through a DC rectifier. With enough canola in the tanks the entire setup is fully self contained and carbon neutral.

Jon wrinkled his nose a bit when I suggested it should be called “Mr Chippie”, however there are substantial advantages in using waste vegetable oil over diesel beyond the obvious cost difference and better smell.

Australia still has absolutely no emissions standards for non-vehicle diesel motors (!) but using vegetable oil instead reduces exhaust GHG by around 75% and NOx by 16%. Alternatively, the CO2 coming out is the same CO2 used by the sun and plants to make the oil.

Jon plans to have the truck ready by March 2024 to support the rally from Adelaide via Flinders Ranges and Snowy Mountains to Canberra. After that, armed with a centrifuge for cleaning out the chip bits and perhaps some strategic oil dumps it is possible that this will be the the first EV of its type to do the big lap.