Modular Electric Truck Safety Layout for Urban Collision Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current electric trucks are often too large for urban areas, limiting their adoption due to size constraints, and lack advanced safety features for enhanced protection during collisions.
Innovation Solution
The electric truck incorporates a 'skateboard' style platform that allows for modular configurations, including a breakaway front section and advanced safety systems like external airbags and internal safety devices, which deploy dynamically based on sensed collision events, and a reconfigurable bed to maintain a compact length while providing hauling and passenger capabilities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If electric trucks are designed with traditional truck configurations to provide hauling and utility functions, then they can perform truck functions effectively, but they become too large for urban areas and dense environments
Solution Approach 1:
The truck is divided into distinct modular sections: a compact cab module and a separate bed module that can be configured independently. This segmentation allows the vehicle to maintain truck functionality while reducing overall length for urban environments. The cab and bed can be optimally sized and positioned to balance utility needs with compactness requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The truck incorporates a reconfigurable bed system that can dynamically change its configuration and capacity. The bed module can be adjusted or reconfigured based on operational needs, allowing the same vehicle to adapt between different hauling requirements and compact urban deployment scenarios, providing versatility without sacrificing compactness.
2Reliability
If electric trucks are simplified versions of gas-powered trucks to reduce complexity, then manufacturing and adoption become easier, but they lack advanced safety features for enhanced protection during collisions
Solution Approach 1:
The truck incorporates external airbags deployed from the front bumper area that inflate before or during collision impact to cushion pedestrians and objects. Additionally, internal airbags are positioned within the cab to protect occupants. These pre-positioned safety devices are integrated into the vehicle structure, providing advanced protection without requiring overly complex systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The safety system is designed to serve multiple functions: external airbags protect both pedestrians and the vehicle front structure, while internal airbags protect cab occupants. The breakaway front section works in conjunction with these airbags to provide layered protection. This multi-functional approach delivers comprehensive safety coverage without proportionally increasing system complexity.
3Reliability
If electric trucks incorporate advanced safety features like external airbags and breakaway sections to enhance collision protection, then passenger and pedestrian safety improve, but vehicle complexity and manufacturing difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The safety features are integrated into modular sections of the truck, particularly the front bumper assembly and cab module. The external airbags are incorporated into the front bumper structure, and the breakaway section is designed as a discrete module that can be manufactured separately and assembled. This modular segmentation allows for specialized safety component manufacturing while maintaining overall production efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The breakaway front section is combined with the external airbag system and front bumper structure into an integrated safety assembly. This merging of functions allows the safety features to work together synergistically while reducing the number of separate components that would need to be manufactured and assembled, thereby easing manufacturing complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Various systems and methods associated with an electric truck are described. In some embodiments, the electric truck includes a safety system that selects and performs safety actions (e.g., deployment of external air bags, activation of internal safety devices) based on a sensed or determined dangerous event. The safety system can, in some cases, determine a mode of deployment of one or more safety devices, and perform an action that deploys the safety devices based on the determined mode and/or based on the determined dangerous event (e.g., potential collision event).