We will send a quartet of trucks to Dakar including the hybrid

16.10.2019

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North Bohemian MKR Technology team is arming for Dakar 2020. And this year will be truly extraordinary. For the first time in history, the team will send a quartet of its racing trucks and for the first time ever, a hybrid truck will start at the most prestigious long-distance rally race. This was unveiled by Mario Kress design team last week in Holland in a in a world's première.

                  “We're on the edge of something brand new. With the help of the Riwald team, we were the first in the world to build a hybrid rally truck. Thanks to the signed contract, we have three years when we can continue to work on the entire concept and develop it, which gives us some breathing space for further improvements. The goal is to get to the top five, ”said Mario Kress, leader of the MKR Technology from Židovice, who is building racing trucks for long-distance rally competitions as a part of his MKR Adventure project.

                  For the first time, Mario Kress and his team participated in Dakar in 2014, when he prepared a racing unit for Aleš Loprais. A year later he sent a pair of Renault trucks to the competition with the Dutch Mammoet Rallysport team. After six years in the field, where he moved from the European Circuit Truck Racing Championship after almost twenty five years, the first hybrid truck was born. Quartet of North Bohemian special racing trucks is also heading for Dakar in January. In addition to proven and experienced pilots, one newcomer will be in the cockpit in the racing truck. The Renault C460 hybrid will be driven by Gert Huzink from Riwald Dakar. His team-mate Pascal de Baar will ride a Renault K520 cab-over-engine special track. Richard de Groot of Firemen Dakar Team will drive the same car at his Dakar debut. And Martin van den Brink, a Mammoet Rallysport star, will drive a truck with typical red front nicknamed  Sherpa. Dutch pilots have an advantage not only in the technical support of the MKR Technology team, but thanks to the four vehicles, the mutual cooperation that worked in previous years is an obvious benefit. “Dakar is not about the strength of one truck. Dakar is all about luck. You can have a car as strong as you want, but it is such a challenging competition that one pitfall, one bad decision and one stupid coincidence is enough and the whole year of preparation is gone. Only good cooperation can help to achieve good ranking. The individual cannot do much on his own. I believe that if we go systematically, we have a chance to succeed. Any statements that we are after specific placings are completely pointless, but yes, we have a dream that we would like to be in the top five within three years, ”said Mario Kress.

                  The all-new hybrid truck attracts a lot of attention. And it is worth that! In the Dakar and other similar competition, the hybrid truck has not yet appeared. Designer Mario Kress is a pioneer of this technology. And how does it work? The truck with the electric motor will run in three strategies. “Electric power gives us an immediate response. The moment the pilot presses the throttle, the truck accelerates faster and only then comes the diesel engine, while the electrical support is reduced,”Mario Kress described the first strategy. The second one comes, for example, in fine sand fesh fesh, when the truck has a high drag and the diesel engine goes to its limit. The pilot asks the on-board technician for support  of the the electric engine. The third strategy of using an electric engine is to save components, because the benefit of the electric engine is that it either provides energy or functions as an alternator that produces energy. “At the same time you are saving your brakes because the truck is is using electric engine to reduce its speed, the battery is being charged at the same time. This is true not only in descents and switchbacks, which are countless in the race, but also on fast roads, where it is necessary to slow down sharply and accelerate quickly again. In these cases it is very easy to overheat the brakes. thoughtful pilot knows that he can't keep pushing hard, but he has to slow down. With the hybrid, I use electric power fro acceleration and during slowing down I charge the battery and save the brakes. So I can go faster and slow down later. This is an appreciable benefit,”described Mario Kress.

The electric motor connection function also saves the environment. “This is also the main mission and philosophy of the titular partner of the Dutch team - Riwald Recycling. We identify with the idea. It would be really unfair for me to say that our sport is environmentally friendly when it is not, but we are trying to find solutions to leave significantly smaller carbon footprint,”said Mario Kress honestly.

So what does this mean in numbers? What is the advantage or savings of a hybrid truck?“Roughly speaking, today we have a capacity of 153 kW, which if we use 100%, which will not happen, because we are talking about using it  for seconds, so at full power we could use it for around 17 minutes. We can reach a speed of about 100 km per hour. The electric engine as such can ride approximately 17 minutes at 100 km per hour, but these are only rough estimates because such situation practically never happens,”Mario Kress is trying to illustrate the situation to a non-technical audience and adds, that the hybrid engine is virtually independent thanks to the recovery system and does not need to be recharged as an electric car. The battery will be charged and ready for the next day while travelling to the bivouac. “This is not an electric truck. With that, you would never finish a stage. You'd need a twelve-ton battery or a damn long cable, ”Mario Kress smiled as he pointed out that with hybrid drive, the basic benefit is saving energy and thus the environment. “Thanks to heat recovery and slowing down with the aid of electrical support, we are also able to significantly reduce diesel consumption. So we have less consumption, or the same consumption, and we go faster or the ideal variant is somewhere in the middle, so that we go faster and save energy at the same time, ”saidthe German designer living in Židovice in North Bohemia.

In particular, Dakar 2020 is to be the first test. MKR Technology team therefore missed the traditional rally in Morocco in October, where they celebrated a number of successes and victories in previous years. “We will focus in particular on the reliability of the truck and the individual systems, because only Dakar will bring a lot of situations that you cannot simulate. It is possible that we find out that the system is not sufficiently cooled, maybe the cooling of the battery will not be enough and it will have to be switched off for safety reasons. Every evening we will have to analyze the data for the next day with the utmost precision. After returning we will be smarter and know what is bothering us and what to focus on. Every new technology brings big pitfalls and now it is very soon to say what a big shift it is, but I believe it will improve by some thirty percent within two to three years. Now we have to move slowly, ” Mario Kress pointed out and once again is turning into a little boy with a new toy. "Is it true. We have new blood flowing in our veins and there are big challenges ahead, ”added Mario Kress with a typical determination.

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