Eaton Gets $45 Million Grant to Provide Plug-in Hybrid Systems for Class 5 Trucks

This story appears in the Aug. 24 print edition of Transport Topics.

Truck component maker Eaton Corp. said that it would provide the electric power systems for 378 Class 5 electric hybrid plug-in vehicles under a federal grant, which it called the “largest commercial hybrid deployment” ever.

An Eaton spokesman also said the company expects to introduce hybrid heavy-duty refuse trucks in September.

Eaton said Aug. 13 that it will work with grant recipient South Coast Air Quality Management District, Diamond Bar, Calif., and its partners in the deploy-ment of the commercial vehicles to more than 50 utility and municipal fleets nationwide.

Eaton also will provide infrastructure for recharging the vehicles.

The Department of Energy awarded $45.4 million for research and production of the hybrids, as well as for the recharging infrastructure, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Eaton said.

“We will be providing the plug-in hybrid electric drive systems for all of the trucks, which will consist of an Eaton transmission clutch, the electric motor, a high-energy storage battery pack and power electronics,” Dimitri Kazarinoff, vice president of Eaton’s hybrid power division in Galesburg, Mich., told Transport Topics.

“The energy storage and battery package have increased substantially in this system over current technology,” he said. “We’ll be using the next generation of lithium-ion batteries that have been put so far only in experimental trucks.”

Kazarinoff said the technology was “evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but it’s helping to commercialize a technology that exists but is not yet viable in mass production.”

Mark Duvall, director of electric transportation at the Electrical Power Research Institute, another project partner based in Palo Alto, Calif., said in Eaton’s statement: “This project leverages Eaton’s current hybrid electric system and builds upon nearly three years of ongoing work by Eaton and EPRI to develop [plug-in hybrid electric] technology for commercial vehicles.”

For 18 months, the participants will further develop and then deploy the vehicles and the accompanying charging infrastructure, the statement said. The vehicles then will be evaluated for two years.

“We believe that building and evaluating these vehicles will lead to even further advances in the technology that will produce longer-lasting and less expensive power systems,” Kazarinoff said.

Eaton also is field-testing six Class 8 trucks with “parallel conventional hybrid” technology suitable for municipal use, he said. For example, Eaton will roll out a hydraulic hybrid Class 8 at the end of September for house-to-house refuse trucks.

“The energy generated by making hundreds of stops per day for refuse will eventually make that truck very attractive economically,” Kazarinoff said. “We’re looking at future potential opportunities for other heavy-duty applications, as well.”

He conceded that “in longhaul, it’s going to be a challenge to find a payback. There is just not enough wasted energy in braking for recharging with current technology.”

Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.) visited Eaton’s Southfield Innovation Center, Southfield, Mich., on Aug. 17 to view its hybrid research department, where he expressed support for legislation, currently before Congress, to extend the heavy-duty hybrid tax credit for five years and double the credit amounts, according to a statement from his office.

Eaton said in a statement the same day that the proposed legislation would cover between 20% and 50% of the incremental cost of heavy-duty hybrid systems, “supporting faster commercialization of these energy-saving technologies.”

Eaton quoted the Hybrid Truck Users Forum as saying incentives in the new legislation could raise U.S. heavy- and medium-duty hybrid industry sales to 10,000 annually by 2014, up from today’s industry volume of less than 2,000.

As in most electric hybrids, the power system converts energy from braking to recharge the vehicle’s battery.

Kazarinoff said that Ford would provide the F550 chassis, which includes a diesel engine, for all of the trucks in the program, but Eaton would take over from there to install the hybrid system. Then, municipalities or utility companies would provide the body of the truck appropriate for its vocation.

“Under this program, the federal grant will provide about 50% of the cost of each vehicle, and the end-user will pay about 50%, which we estimate would be just about what a standard Ford Class 5 would cost,” Kazarinoff said.

The project partners anticipate that further technological developments and the costs of scale, he said, would reduce fuel and maintenance costs to make the price of future vehicles economically competitive.

Kazarinoff said that the new hybrid would be able to travel 300 miles in urban traffic on one tank of diesel and one charge of the truck’s battery.

“We estimate that it will increase fuel efficiency by 70% over similar, diesel-only trucks,” he said. “In addition, the cost of maintenance will be much lower.”

For example, he said, the new truck’s braking system was expected to last twice as long as a conventional system, and a hydraulic plug-in, when deployed, would have brakes that last four times as long.

“In the case of a hybrid or hydraulic, when you put your foot on the brake, you don’t put any pressure on the brake disc or brake drum and, therefore, there is no wear and tear,” Kazarinoff said.

“The braking motion sends heat into the electric motor, which becomes a generator and, as it spins, that motor slows the vehicle down, and the braking energy goes into the battery and not into the brake pads,” he said. “Without hybrid, the heat is just dissipated into the atmosphere.”

The other participants are: the Electrical Power Research Institute; Altec Industries; Compact Power Inc.; Ford Motor Co.; and Southern California Edison.