Truck manufacturers, such as Navistar and Paccar, say their hybrid trucks will increase fuel efficiency by 30 to 40 percent.

 

Thinking green begins as an individual effort. The average Joes or Janes might recycle their aluminum cans, sample organic food or purchase a hybrid vehicle. But business leaders are the minds of an entire corporation. It’s up to them to provoke change on the national level, while still considering the positive and negative effects it could have on the company. Joe and Jane might buy a hybrid vehicle not only to lessen their contributions to air pollution, but also to withstand rising fuel costs. Now businesses can do the same.

The world’s first hybrid commercial vehicle made its debut in 2006 in the form of a brown UPS truck. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) partnered with UPS to develop the first delivery truck to use EPA-patented hydraulic hybrid technology. Now, other hybrid medium-duty commercial vehicles will reach the market this year, ranging from school buses to refuse trucks.

International Truck and Engine Corp., a Navistar company, announced in November that it plans to be the first to enter line production of hybrid commercial trucks, and is now manufacturing the International DuraStar Hybrid, a diesel hybrid-electric, medium-duty truck.

“We believe that hybrid technology is an important development for the commercial transportation sector,” Navistar President and CEO Daniel C. Usian said in a statement. “Increasing fuel efficiency and reducing emissions for the nation’s commercial trucks results in significant benefits for all of us.”

Paccar Inc., the parent company of Kenworth and Peterbilt, said it also will introduce a hybrid-powered, medium-duty truck in 2008. Peterbilt is actively developing and testing four distinct hybrid technology vehicle applications, according to Chief Engineer Landon Sproull. These include two hybrid-electric, heavy-duty vehicles for long-haul and stop-and-go applications and two medium-duty vehicles, either equipped for a stationary power take-off or used in pick-up and delivery applications.

Peterbilt and Eaton Corp. are in a joint venture to use Eaton’s hydraulic-hybrid system in refuse trucks. The two have also partnered with Wal-Mart in producing a hybrid, heavy-duty vehicle based on Peterbilt’s model 386. Kenworth is offering limited production of medium-duty hybrid trucks for municipal fleets and utility companies. So is Freightliner LLC.

Significant Savings
“Six years ago, there wasn’t a truck maker that would say the word ‘hybrid’ in public,” says Bill Van Amburg, senior vice president of Pasadena, Calif.-based WestStart-CALSTART. “They weren’t yet convinced that there was a market for it. It didn’t look like class 8 long-haul big rigs were a good application for hybrids at that stage.”

WestStart-CALSTART is a nonprofit organization that works with public and private entities in the transportation industry to promote advances in clean technology. It helped connect Navistar and other commercial hybrid truck manufacturers with the appropriate suppliers and government agencies to quickly bring their products to market. “Now, after about six years of development and first application launches, it is starting to look like hybrid might make sense in a class 8,” Van Amburg continues. “Its fuel-saving potential is significant.”

The EPA reported that the world’s first hybrid UPS truck increased fuel efficiency by 60 to 70 percent in urban driving. The other manufacturers have announced results in the 30 to 40 percent range. This means, at $2.70 a gallon for fuel, savings will range from $3,500 to $4,500 a year per truck. For a fleet of 10 trucks, a company’s annual savings would be $35,000 to $45,000. When one imagines how much Wal-Mart – which operates the nation’s second-largest private commercial fleet – will save, it is no surprise the corporation is teaming up with Peterbilt and Eaton on
a hybrid, heavy-duty V8.

In addition, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides tax credits for medium- and heavy-duty hybrid vehicle purchases. According to Greendiesel-technology.com, the tax benefits range from $1,500 to $12,000 per truck, depending on the vehicle’s weight and its increase in fuel economy when compared to a non-hybrid vehicle.

“When you combine the high cost of diesel with potential maintenance savings and tax incentives, the business case for hybrid-electric vehicles becomes more and more favorable,” Tom Cellitti, vice president and general manager of Medium Vehicle Center, International Truck and Engine Corp., said in a statement.

“As the production volume of hybrid trucks increases, the price will decrease due to scale, making a commercially viable product much more likely in the future.”

Endless Possibilities
The competing forms of hybrid technology being developed and brought to market are another reason why hybrid truck prices will decrease. To date, there are two forms of hybrid technology in use. Most recognize electric hybrids, which were introduced to the world stage in the late 1990s by Japanese automobile manufacturers.

Navistar and Paccar are both introducing electric-hybrid commercial trucks this year. The vehicle that Peterbilt and Eaton are developing uses hydraulic-hybrid technology. Electric hybrids employ regenerative braking as a way to generate electricity for storage in a battery. The battery is then used with an electric motor. Hydraulic hybrids, on the other hand, recover the energy in the form of pressurized hydraulic fluid. The hybrid technology that the EPA used on its UPS truck in 2006 was hydraulic.

Van Amburg says the green technology under development isn’t stopping at hybrids. “In the truck market, if you can make the driveline engine more efficient, hybrid is only one piece of that,” he notes. “Once you start to hybridize the driveline, it makes all kinds of other technologies possible like a more efficient electro turbo.

“Without going too deep with what is allowed [to mention to the public], the waste that comes from a large engine could turn into electricity and feed back into the driveline. All of a sudden, you have another way of adding electrical current. You can further reduce the need to burn fuel in the main engine. If you look at a really big truck, the energy load to run the pumps, compressors and big fan on the engine can be 100 horsepower or more. If you cut down the energy to run these auxiliaries, you can make them more efficient.”

Hybridization should be considered the base level of a whole new arena in commercial truck manufacturing, Van Amburg says. “There are all kinds of ways to further reduce energy and increase the sophistication of trucks going down the road,” he states. “It opens up new areas that can blossom in trucks. I see trucks becoming 30 to 60 percent more energy efficient than they are today, with hybridization being just one piece of that total.”