The reason why ACEC was interested in electric armoured vehicles was that they produced the transmission system for the French Crotale SAM system 4x4 vehicles. These had an odd requirement, in that they needed a lot of electrical power for the radars when they were stationary, with no drive to the wheels, but very little when they were moving and the engine was revving highly and producing lots of power (the SAM system could only be operated when the vehicles were stationary). Normally, such a vehicle would have an auxilliary generator, but that would be dead weight when it was driving, so they came up with the idea of having a single diesel generator which could feed electric power to the wheels or the radars as required, and ACEC got the contract.

My EE Prof always joked "There are no electrical problems, only mechanical problems in electrical systems." and that you couldn't break electricity but you could break wires and all the other pieces of the system. lol

Poor old Chieftain looks as if he has been trying out those Belgian beers the previous night. They are lethal man. You can't drink them in pints or you end up getting too pissed hahah.

Somehow GI Joe always knew France would team up with Cobra.

I don't know this vehicle at all, but you had me at Cobra

Watching you turn yourself into Chieftain-gami never gets old. Thank you for just assuming a small person like yourself is going to fit.

I can't imagine those rubber hatch seals surviving soldiers very long...

Fun fact, belgian army still uses AC Generators build by ACEC to these days ! These things are apocalypse proof level of reliable !
Thanks ACEC !

11:38 Note that the Belgian army only selects smaller people as armoured vehicle drivers.

They were build 5km from my house in Charleroi !
The place didnt exist anymore (the shop/factory) and fun fact, Belgian Defense is rebuilding the place for a new barrack complex for medium infantry battalion ! What a fate !

That thing must have been incredibly loud inside with that engine screaming at 3200rpm ALL THE TIME.

Did not expect Formula 1 trivia but it is a welcome suprise

Moving the vehicle with a set of jumper cables to a following vehicle is about as clever as the story about jump starting the auxiliary power unit on a C-130 using a SeaBee truck (which then allowed the engines to start, etc.).

Nice, an AC Cobra with air con and powered seats, Carroll Shelby would have been proud.

@13:10 the button on the floor is probably an intercom trigger.  The Apache has two that look almost exactly the same: floor mounted, big clicky button.  One is for radio push to talk and the other is for intercom push to talk.

This is one of those "WHAT the hell is that?" Chieftain videos.

14:27 We, in Charleroi pronounce "ACEC", like "A Sekh" ;)

I'm guessing the light tank wasn't supposed to be swimmable; since it doesn't have the deployable splashguard.  But might have been nice to show its rear and see whether it carried the same props and rudders as the APC variant.

The highbeam switch was used as an engine starting switch on some military trucks

I can understand why it was too early. Had a car from the early 90's that had electric everything. Which just meant nothing worked and I had no manual control as back up. Took a while to get everything reasonably reliable for civilian use, so we may now be getting to cheap and reliable enough for military use.