HYBRIDS COMING OF AGE

October 22, 2008 Vol. 4, No. 22

My brain’s buzzing, folks, after attending yet another information-intensive event last week. There’s just so much to write about these days and so little space to do it in. Very frustrating.

I’ve concluded, in fact, that I may never finish reporting on last month’s IAA Commercial Vehicles Show in Germany, so I’m going to dribble interesting items into this space as I continue reporting on the domestic scene. But having spent a couple of days at the Hybrid Truck Users Forum in South Bend, Indiana last week, the truth is that I’ll be trying to cover that one properly for months too.

People sometimes ask me how I find things to write about, and I usually laugh at that one. Honestly, there’s never been a shortage in my 30 years of doing this. And nowadays... well, the supply is endless. Which leads me to wonder how you guys can keep up. Gathering and sifting information is what I do, all day and every day, but you lot have real work to do. Your challenge is considerable.

ANYWAY, LAST WEEK IT WAS THE 8TH ANNUAL HTUF national meeting, and a wildly successful one at that. A whopping 550 people attended. At its first get-together in 2002, there were a total of seven trucks to look at, and not all could be driven. This year there were 35 working trucks for ride-and-drive day at the Bosch proving grounds just outside South Bend, with another dozen or more in static displays, and several manufacturers are now in series production. The hybrid truck is a real player now, and it seems momentum is gained every day.

“We’re so close to the tipping point, to commercial success, but we’re not there yet,” said John Boesel, president and CEO of CALSTART, in his opening address to the meeting last week.

The HTUF event is organized by CALSTART, which is a California-based non-profit organization (www.calstart.org) that works to develop and implement clean, efficient transportation options, working with manufacturers and end users alike. HTUF is an offshoot, a user-focused coalition, North American in scope, that aims to speed the commercialization of hybrid trucks. It’s gone beyond that now to include high-efficiency medium- and heavy-duty vehicles in general.

Boesel said the hybrid industry will be well established, and we’re not far off this mark, when 2000 to 3000 trucks a year are built. The current vision has a target of a 30% hybrid share of the work-truck market and 5% of the heavy-duty market by 2020, he said.

Not incidentally, HTUF is partnered with the U.S. Army and its National Automotive Center in on-going development work. Not long ago, the Army had a technological lead in the hybrid world but the commercial industry has since bypassed it in what sometimes seems like a frenzy of activity in bringing trucks to new niche markets and applications. Beverage trucks and tractor-trailer units, along with pickup-and-delivery vehicles, are attracting special attention these days, though utility trucks may still offer the biggest bang for the buck in terms of fuel- and emissions-saving potential.

There are in fact six working groups within HTUF, each addressing the specifics of a key application: utility, parcel delivery, refuse, bus, class 8, plug-in, and incentives.

All of those and more were represented on the Bosch test track last week. The unique and purpose-built Unicell Quicksider battery-electric parcel delivery van with powertrain by ArvinMeritor was on hand to represent Canada in its Purolator colors, and it was attracting a ton of interest.

Among the trucks I hadn’t seen in the flesh before was the plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) utility truck from Wisconsin body-builder Dueco (www.dueco.com). Its system, shown at HTUF on an International truck, is actually independent of the chassis maker entirely and can be fitted to any truck – given a lead time of 8 to 10 months.

The Dueco system is geared toward the stationary work of a bucket truck, and its 35-kw battery pack can handle a typical lineman’s full day, or 2 to 4 hours of continuous electric operation. Using an Allison transmission, a Bosch motor, and Odyne controls and electronics, Dueco is an integrator and has built several such utility trucks to date. It anticipates building 25 hybrid trucks this year. The trucks are still in the R&D stage, but there has been much interest in the product, especially in western Canada. The company is represented in Canada by Wajax Industries in the east and Vancouver’s Commercial Equipment in the west.

The truck's hybrid system is recharged both while its engine is operating and when it’s plugged in at night. It’s a parallel system – the diesel or gas engine runs in combination with the electric motor which is powered by the big battery pack. The truck accelerates with power from both the gas/diesel and electric motors and runs the hydraulics off the batteries and electric motors.

EATON IS THE GRANDADDY OF DIESEL/ELECTRIC HYBRIDS, of course, and dominated the test track, its hybrid powertrains evident in 24 of the 35 ride-and-drive vehicles. One of those was a Freightliner Business Class M2E straight truck from Clark Freightways in Burnaby, B.C. That was a long trip.

Eaton actually has three separate hybrid power solutions for commercial vehicles, including electric, Hydraulic Launch Assist (HLA), and series hydraulic.

Its ubiquitous hybrid diesel/electric system is in production and is available as an optional powertrain on certain truck models at International, Freightliner, Peterbilt, and Kenworths. The company says it’s also developing plug-in architecture.

The HLA system, targeted at refuse trucks, uses regenerative braking and employs that energy to drive a combination hydraulic pump/motor, moving hydraulic fluid from the low-pressure reservoir to a high-pressure accumulator. During acceleration, fluid in the accumulator is metered out to drive the pump/motor as a motor, transmitting torque to the driveshaft. The HLA system is in a limited launch phase at Peterbilt on its Model 372 refuse chassis.

In a series hybrid hydraulic system, the conventional vehicle driveline is replaced by hydraulics, and energy is transferred from the engine to the drive wheels by fluid power. The truck uses hydraulic pump/motors and hydraulic storage tanks to recover and store energy, similar to what’s done with electric motors and batteries in hybrid electric vehicles. Eaton’s series hydraulic system is in an advanced stage of development, with a prototype unit in daily operation at UPS.

NOW LET‘S GO BACK TO GERMANY for a look at a couple of interesting introductions by Volvo at the IAA show.

The first is a new alcohol interlock now available as a factory option on FM, FH and FH16 trucks, or it can be retrofitted to any Volvo truck. Called the Alcolock, it’s unique in being a databook option. In fact, it’s been available in Sweden and France for some time but is now available in this new third-generation model Europe-wide.

To start the engine, the driver must first take a breath test by exhaling through a mouthpiece on the hand-held Alcolock unit for five seconds. If he’s within the limit, ‘Start Motor’ appears in the display. If not, ‘Lock Out’ is displayed and the engine can’t be started.

Uniquely, and I have yet to get details on this, it’s powered by “advanced fuel cell technology”. It consists of an integrated unit in the dash and a hand-held unit in the cab, and it’s said to be highly accurate.

Volvo says a third of the roughly 40,000 traffic-related deaths reported in the European Union each year can be directly attributed to alcohol. Truck drivers are rarely offenders here, but the Swedish truck-maker says “transport companies and drivers alike are under increasing pressure to prove that they are doing everything possible to minimise the risk factors and promote safer driving.”

Another interesting new technology, Volvo’s Overview Surveillance System, is being tested on the company’s hybrid refuse trucks. Developed in concert with Toshiba, it gives drivers a unique bird’s-eye view of the vehicle and its surroundings. It’s designed primarily to support the driver in slow-speed situations like backing up, parking, or driving down narrow city streets.

The system utilizes four fisheye cameras mounted on each side of the vehicle. This electronic eye system “de-warps” and seamlessly combines the images to produce an overhead view of the truck and its surroundings. Uniquely it gives the driver a sense of distance by showing the positions of objects or people in relationship to the truck itself.

ONE FINAL NOTE, and it’s a good one. RigMaster has launched what it calls the “Roll Back the Hands of Time” promotion that will see the price of a T2 auxiliary power unit drop to pre-2005 pricing levels, It amounts to a net saving of up to 10%, if the unit is purchased and installed between now and December 31, 2008.

RigMaster says the APU burns just 2/10 gallon of diesel per hour and can pay for itself in a year. You get heating, air conditioning, 6000 watts of electrical power for in-cab appliances, and a 60 Amp DC alternator that charges the truck’s batteries. Available with either a Perkins or a Caterpillar engine, the T2 is EPA compliant and can be operated in California when installed on 2006 or older model trucks. Check it out at www.rigmasterpower.com.

Next time out I’ll delve into a little more HTUF detail and offer yet another tidbit or two from the Hannover show.

This newsletter is published every two weeks. It's a heads-up notice about what's going on with trucking technology as well as what you can see at www.todaystrucking.com where you'll find in-detail coverage of nearly everything that's new. Plus interesting products that may not have had the 'air play' they deserved within the last few months. Why not subscribe today?

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I should remind you that I don’t endorse any of the products I write about in this e-newsletter, nor do I have the resources to test them. What you’re getting is reasonably well educated opinion based on three decades in trucking. And in the case of the individual product items, I’m presenting simple news from the manufacturer or service provider, with the hyperbole removed and clarification applied.

If you have comments of whatever sort about Product Watch, or maybe a gizmo I should know about, please contact me at rlockwood@newcom.ca.

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