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Hybrid Trucks

Posted by Alan Durning

06/09/2006 10:05 AM

NW truckmakers going hybrid.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the Northwest's two big truck makers PACCAR (of Bellevue) and Freightliner (of Portland) are developing hybrid-electric drives for their step trucks and other mid-sized vehicles. That's a bigger deal than you might imagine.

As Clark noted here, improving the fuel economy of low-mpg vehicles actually matters a lot more than improving the fuel economy of high-mpg vehicles. The fuel savings are much larger.

(We touched on the energy security benefits here: Cascadia Scorecard 2005 (pdf, see page 50).)

Sprawl & Transportation

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Comments

Posted by Rodney 06/12/2006 05:27 PM

While this sounds great, I worry it might not be the best application of hybrid technology. Hybrid tends to help a lot in stop and go traffic, and not so much on the open long-haul road. This could be great for heavy local delivery trucks. (Think postal service, UPS, armored cars, etc.) Long-haul trucks, on the other hand, wouldn't be nearly as big of a win, IMHO.

(I'm still wondering why King County's Metro runs most of its hybrids on long-distance routes instead of on the stop-and-go in-city routes. The in-city neighborhoods they serve would also benefit from the reduced noise of hybrid busses vs. traditional diesel.)

Posted by Alan Durning 06/12/2006 08:04 PM

Good point, Rodney. In fact, you're so astute that you ended up describing the market that the truck makers are actually targeting: medium-weight trucks such as those used by UPS and FedEx for urban delivery. (See the links in the orginal article.)

RMI's book Winning the Oil Endgame (www.oilendgame.com) documents a variety of other fuel-saving design innovations for heavier trucks.

Posted by MichelleV.P. 06/12/2006 11:31 PM

Good discussion.

Since I don't understand hybrid technology very well, your points are helping me see both the relevance of this technology and the best uses of it.

(Full disclosure: I've never even owned a car, but I do try to keep up with the latest technological advances in good fuel-economy, should I ever decide to get one.)