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Hybrid Haulage * USA - Could save fuel and the environment
US members of congress are pressing for government to support the development of medium and large trucks with hybrid electric-combustion engines
Washingtron,DC,USA -NewScientistTech (Haywards Heath,UK ), by Jeff Hecht -24 June 2008: -- ...The call for the Department of Energy to help out came after hearings by the House of Repesentatives science and technology committee on the future for hybrid trucks, and US pump prices exceeding a once unthinkable $4 a gallon... Hybrid technology for trucks is about a decade behind, says Richard Parish of the Hybrid Truck Users Forum, an organisation partly supported by the US Army to develop the industry... Hybrid trucks have developed slowly because the complexity of hybrid vehicles is a bad fit with the way trucks are built, says Parish. Hybrids attain high efficiency by integrating combustion and electric engines, transmission, drive train, and other components into a seamless whole, carefully managed by a computer. Achieving that is difficult for truck vendors who typically add components from various suppliers onto an in-house chassis... And electric vehicles are becoming more common on delivery routes. At current prices that saves $2500 a year per truck... Counterintuitively, large long-haul trucks benefit from cutting idling too. A hybrid long-haul truck could save 3270 gallons of fuel a year – 7 to 10% of usual fuel use... Technological hurdles remain, however. Batteries must become lighter, cheaper and able to power equipment that now runs off idling engines, says Terry Penney, manager of advanced vehicle technology at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado... The science and technology committee is now drafting a bill that would see the DOE support hybrid trucks, adding to a recently announced $30-million programme of aid for plug-in hybrid cars...
Labels: hybrids trucks
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