Truck and engine manufacturers have been challenged by various regulations to do the seemingly impossible: remove emissions from more than 3 million commercial trucks in less than three decades. No one's been given a road map, but everyone's been given deadlines and a complex ruleset that Lars Stenqvist, Volvo Group executive vice president of Trucks Technology, calls "exciting."
“I’m in the industry of making the impossible possible," he said. "That’s why we have engineers.”
Stenqvist's optimism is tempered with frustration with "trigger happy" lawmakers hellbent on banning potential solutions rather than simply telling engineers what they want to achieve.
“I have 15,000 engineers [at Volvo Group],” he said. “Tell them what you want to achieve, but don’t ban technologies... there is no silver bullet to decarbonize transportation.”
Stenqvist sees a varied approach to driveline propulsion yielding the best and most desired results, and letting the segments determine what solutions work best in their applications. Stenqvist, too, said his own opinions on how and where batteries and hydrogen have changed over the last several years, and how solutions like hydrogen combustion engines – which produces no carbon dioxide but does have nitrogen oxide emissions – should also be in play.
“We should be be able to determine where to use it, and where should we not use it," he said.
