From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine
- March 31, 2015 -
Logistics News: Another "Super Truck" from DOE Program Promises Major Fuel Savings
New Truck from Daimler North America Said to Achieve Amazing 115% in Freight Efficiency
SCDigest Editorial Staff
For the past few years, the US Department of Energy has been running a "SuperTruck," program in which it is matching investment dollars with several major truck and engine manufacturers in an effort to gain substantial improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency.
Officially, the DOE says the program is about "expediting the development of advanced heavy-duty vehicle efficiency technologies." It further says this research is connected to looming fuel standards for heavy duty trucks likely to be effective in 2020 that are supposed to be developed by the end of this year – meaning the stakes are high. The DOE program has some $284 million in funding.
SCDigest Says: |
 |
| During that test, the Daimler truck achieved an average of a remarkable of 12.2 mpg, almost double the levels of trucks currently on the road. |
|
What Do You Say?
|
|
|
|
To ensure total vehicle improvement, program objectives state that 30% of the vehicle efficiency improvement must come from the tractor and trailer, while the other 20% should come from the engine. Along with the overall efficiency, each vehicle's engine needs to show a 50% brake thermal efficiency.
In mid-2014, a combination of engine maker Cummins and truck manufacturer Peterbilt announced significant progress, saying that testing for its SuperTruck design had demonstrated gains of more than 68% in freight efficiency over a 24-hour duty-cycle, a 50% improvement in freight efficiency on an 11-hour drive-cycle, and a 20% improvement in the thermal efficiency of the engine.
Freight efficiency is a measure of how much freight can be moved over a given distance by a given amount of fuel, using a metric of something like freight-tons moved per mile. That is considered a more meaningful number than miles per gallon because mpg by itself does not consider the weight of the freight being moved.
The Cummins-Peterbilt gains were achieved from a combination of increased aerodynamics, reductions in tractor-trailer weight, and gains in "thermal efficiency," which has to do with the engine's ability to convert the chemical energy contained in a gallon of fuel to power at the driveshaft.
While the gains were impressive, experts cautioned that the some of the technologies involved were far from commercialization, so the full practicality of the total design was in question. However, many of the technologies in the design are or could easily be commercialized.
"In light-weighting the truck, we used some rather exotic components, such as magnesium crossmembers and the aluminum-matrix brake drums," a Peterbilt spokesperson said at the time. "They certainly have commercial potential, but they probably wouldn't be readily accepted by industry. Our next challenge is in making those things commercially viable."
Others noted the goal of the SuperTruck program was not to design at this point a commercially viable vehicle, but rather to show what could be accomplished, even if there are questions about how much of the technology innovation can soon make it on the road.
(Transportation Management Article Continued Below)
|
