Via The Washington Post:
General Dynamics currently manufactures the army’s main battle tank, the Abrams, and BAE Systems builds the Bradley. Those two companies are now competing for the new contract, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts will be worth approximately $29 billion.
The new tank will ideally seat nine passengers instead of the seven who can fit in a Bradley, and it will probably weigh around 70 tons. That’s about twice as much as the Bradley and around the same as the Abrams. BAE’s proposed vehicle, which it would build with help from Northrop Grumman, would be among the largest land vehicles ever constructed with an electric battery in a hybrid engine. (image: A handout illustration from BAE Systems of the company’s Hybrid Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV). BAE is teaming up with Northrop Grumman on a bid for a U.S. Army contract to construct the next generation Bradley tank. (BAE Systems)
For their part,
representatives of General Dynamics are skeptical of the idea of
equipping a large tank with a hybrid engine, but Venkat Srinivasan,
a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an
expert on energy storage, said there are reasons to think BAE’s approach
“I would argue that, in these sorts of heavy-gasoline-use applications, hybridizing things makes a lot of sense,” Srinivasan said. He noted that large, heavy vehicles use enough gasoline to justify the expense of a battery system, and that they have plenty of space as well as a need for power at low engine speeds, which an electric motor can provide.
Most of the time, the power in BAE’s tank would come from
diesel generators that would deliver electricity to the motor and to the
batteries. When extra power is needed, such as when the tank is
accelerating, the batteries would engage. According to BAE, the tank
would use 10 to 20 percent less fuel than a vehicle of the same size
with a conventional engine. Because of its sheer mass, it would still be
inefficient relative to other kinds of vehicles. Despite its hybrid engine and 255-gallon gas tank, the tank would be able to go no more than 186 miles without refueling, according to the company. (continue reading at The Washington Post, more images)