ATA, Others Urge Action on Vehicle Technology Bill

This story appears in the June 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

American Trucking Associations and other business groups are urging the Senate to move forward with a bill that would create a research program to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heavy- and medium-duty trucks.

The Advanced Vehicle Technology Act of 2009 passed the House in September but has since lingered in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

A May 25 letter from ATA, truck manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and more than a dozen others asked that the bill be reported out to the full Senate.

Last month, President Obama issued an executive memorandum ordering that new vehicle emissions standards be developed for trucks made from 2014 through 2018 (click here for previous story).

That makes the advanced technology bill “critical going forward,” said the letter to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

“We believe that coordinated and comprehensive research efforts into a range of advanced vehicle technologies will help achieve the twin goals of improved vehicle efficiency and reduced emissions,” the letter said.

The groups also said the vehicle technology bill would improve research coordination between government and industry in order to develop and deploy technologies to reduce fuel use and emissions.

If the Senate does not take up the bill by the end of the year, the proposal will die as the legislative session ends, said Glen Kedzie, environmental affairs counsel for ATA.

A research program like the one outlined in the bill is critical, Kedzie said, because the trucking industry needs advanced technologies to take a new generation of trucks beyond the 2014-18 time period covered in Obama’s order.

“In the past, there’s been an extensive amount of monies allocated to research on light-duty vehicles and, insofar as other applications are concerned, [trucks have] been rather shortchanged,” he said.

Kedzie said medium and heavy trucks will meet the 2014-18 fuel standard by using “off-the-shelf technologies” such as those promoted by the SmartWay program developed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Those measures include low rolling-resistance tires and aerodynamic designs for trucks.

Beyond that time frame, however, the advanced technology bill would help trucking meet another fuel standard, Kedzie said. There must be research and testing, he said, into such things as hybrids and battery-powered trucks.

“There’s so many different fixes for our industry that have not even been explored yet,” Kedzie said.