Looking into the crystal ball for engine maker Cummins, Andrew Booth, Manager On-Highway Business Cummins WA, was speaking at the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association event about future product from Cummins.

Cummins will also be continuing with its a joint venture with Eaton and its automated manual transmissions including the Endurant XD Pro, which appeared this year in the new Kenworth K220.

There are other internal combustion engines, using hydrogen and various gases, but also electrolysers to create hydrogen to power fuel cells, there’s also, batteries, electric motors, inverters and software. Meritor are developing e-axles for the business.

“Effectively, what does all this mean?” said Andrew. “At the end of the day we want technology to match the power we use today. We want to do that in a staged and rational manner. The best way to do that is to ensure that we do not tear up the truck design. We need minimal impact to transition us to a net zero future.

“Let’s be real, today we use internal combustion engines, and we are advancing the diesel internal combustion engine. I’m sure many people were at the Brisbane Truck Show and would have seen our recently announced, next generation X15 platform. Part of that is the X15H hydrogen combustion engine. These are the practical solutions for decarbonisation, where we can change the energy source for the engine while still having the same powertrain combined behind it.”

The implementation of these kinds of technologies can go ahead when Australia gets the kind of renewable green hydrogen fuel infrastructure the industry will need to support the number of trucks on the road the economy requires. Cummins is working towards the position where it can supply the right technology for the applications the industry needs.

The new X15 is a completely new engine from Cummins. It has been designed from the ground up as a platform for a series combustion engines using various fuels. The basic design, which features a modern sculpted block, can be fitted with a variety of different cylinder heads for different fuels. For the diesel or hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) version, the whole package is reckoned to be 225kg lighter than the current X15 we have today. The X15D, diesel version, will be available up to 660hp.

The hydrogen engine, the X15H, will use spark ignition and a renewable gas or biogas engine which is included in the new X15 family as well. These engines will be able run on various forms of gas. Depending on the feedstock used to make any of these gases, these can be capable of a 90 per cent reduction in carbon emissions. These gas engines will not be able to produce the level of horsepower available in the diesel version of the range and will probably be available at around 510hp.

“This is a next generation engine, and with the upgrade in materials and design, we’ve been able to go forward, in terms of reducing tail pipe emissions,” said Andrew. “This is not our first foray into hydrogen. We have hydrogen engines in production today. We started with the X7, and the X10 which is our new mid bore engine design, and then the X15. These are spark ignited direct injection engines.

“For hydrogen power there are two applications, one is the internal combustion engine, which fits in the same envelope as your traditional diesel engine today, mounted to an automated manual or manual transmission. We will mount the hydrogen packs on the back of the cab. The other way forward is the FCV, the fuel cell electric vehicle. This will have the hydrogen fuel cell stack in the engine bay. Then there will also be battery packs, hydrogen tanks and traction motors. We’re not going to be changing the base truck design and will be integrating the technology with a design which helps improve that transition towards zero.

“This is all about how we reach destination zero. Diesel is not dead. We expect to keep diesel technology for another 20 to 30 years to come. But we are going to be phasing into lower carbon technologies in the next five to 10 years’ time we will be advancing and driving reductions in CO2 emissions as well as NOx and particulate matter in internal combustion engines.

“Whilst we start this journey, we need the government to start investing in new technology and into the grid system. So that, if you want a battery vehicle, you’ve got more capacity in the grid to deal with charging those vehicles, and then also other renewable fuel infrastructure. There’s no point, producing hydrogen if it’s coming from fossil fuels in the first place.”

For more stories like ‘Future Product from Cummins’ – see below

The highly sophisticated technology we fit on our trucks and trailers today has come a long way in the last twenty years, but with the need for ever more efficient and safe road transport, there is much further to go, when it comes to the level of sophistication needed in the decades to come.

“We need to be able to provide the right solutions at the right time, which are then still cost effective enough so that we can also really sell that to our customers,” says Stefan Pahl, Director Application Engineering and Technical Sales Knorr Bremse. “If we were to just simply double the braking system, it will probably also be a kind of a redundancy. It would be very good and we would make a lot of money for us, but no one would accept that.

“We need to have some kind of clever architecture in place, and it is a fascinating topic that we’re working on at the moment. Partial failure modes, and stuff like that, will be an important part of the development. If we have one critical error, there’s a red warning lamp and the driver would need to stop.

“In the future, we will have to have the possibility to switch from a primary system to a secondary system, and then the driver will not even realise that it has happened. They will get a certain notification, that they’ve gone over to the backup, but the backup system will still provide the same performance.”

If a failure occurs the system will just move on to the next layer of redundancy and the vehicle will perform as normal. The back-up will still provide the same functionality, the same performance, so the vehicle can continue on its route unhindered.

This is unlike the current situation with some electronic systems, where they simply go into limp home mode if there is an issue. The vehicle’s driver will not notice any difference as one system fails in some way, the back-up kicks in seamlessly. If the second layer of redundancy has an issue there will be a third layer to back-up any failure.

“In the second redundant layer, there will be certain performance deficiencies within the system, but the performance also be acceptable and safe,” says Stefan. “It may be like a limp home mode, but maybe, the depending on the criticality, it can just still perform a certain kind of minimal risk manoeuvre. It may be able to park the trailer in a safe spot get the vehicle combination out of the way so that it doesn’t affect the flow of traffic.”

Armed with this knowledge the team at Knorr Bremse is already building an architecture which will be able to cope with these new and expected developments. As a system is developed it already has the capacity to handle tasks and functionality which are yet to become available. When new systems come to fruition it will not necessarily be a hardware update but may be a software update.

“Changes in the future may also need additional hardware, if you if you think about the communication between truck and trailer,”says Stefan. “We will definitely need to have a different type of connection, which will also provide a certain type of redundancy, but also a much higher speed interaction.

“We’re convinced that due to certain manoeuvres that can easily happen on a day to day basis on motorways, that you also need to have some kind of real perception behind the trailer. Something like long range radar, maybe also combined with a short range radar, so that you can also detect what’s going on behind the trailer.

“Especially when you come to certain yard manoeuvring issues. When you have a certain angle between the truck and the trailer, there will be a big blind spot behind the trailer, and the environment perception of the truck alone will not be able to get a real overview.”

For more stories like ‘Sophistication Needed in the Decades to Come’ – see below

This week NatRoad has called for the creation of a Clean Transport Fund of $3.5 billion, which points the way towards an initiative which would see the government get the zero emissions ball rolling for road transport.

Everybody knows that the transition across to zero emission trucks is going to be expensive, but we genuinely have to make a serious start, as soon as possible, in order to meet the targets already set by the government over the next 10, 20 or 30 years.

So far there has been some funding, which has helped with the large order for a bunch of electric trucks for TeamGlobal Express. Although this is a good start, the trucking industry, which already runs on extremely tight margins is being asked to change from generic diesel trucks to the much more expensive zero emission trucks.

Very few road transport operations have a business model which could withstand the pressure created by a trebling of the capital cost of its vehicles. Okay, we could argue that once having made that capital investment, the chances are that, if the charging or refuelling infrastructure is good enough, then running costs should be lower.

However, charging and refuelling infrastructure in Australia at the moment hardly exists. The development of this infrastructure also needs an element of initial government subsidisation to give it a helping hand and in order to create the conditions under which road transport operators would feel comfortable in investing in the new equipment, which is zero carbon.

We are in one of those chicken and egg situations. When we get a few more zero emission trucks on the road, there will need to be more infrastructure developed to service it. On the other side of the coin, if there was more infrastructure on the road to refuel or charge zero carbon trucks, the road transport industry would invest in further capital equipment to make use of that recharging and refuelling infrastructure.

It has long been a tenet of Australian Governments of any colour to avoid intervening in a market, but any intervention which would take place, resulting from the development of this Clean Transport Fund proposed by NatRoad, would be an investment in developing the Australian economy and making it easier for the country, as a whole, to reach its zero carbon targets, which have already been set.

The other factor a Clean Transport Fund would demonstrate, would be buy-in from from the powers-that-be into something which most operators in the country would agree with, in principle, but do not feel they have the financial means to action in the near future.

Operators would find it difficult to transform their operations without some form of help, and an initiative which shows willing on the part of the government is always going to help people to make a change, which the government wants them to make.

It is important to get the zero emissions ball rolling. This is an opportunity to do it, and compared with some of the other capital expenditure our current government is talking about, this would be a relatively cheap option at $3.5 billion.

For more stories like ‘Get the Zero Emissions Ball Rolling’ – see below