Still tomorrow’s truck?
OEMs are adamant that hybrid powertrains are the wave of the future. So why aren’t there more of them on the road?
It was nearly 10 years ago when medium-duty hybrid-drive trucks first emerged in the North American market. The new powertrain offered a few fuel economy benefits, and it appeared that hybrids could evolve into more than a niche product beyond powering refuse trucks with their extreme stop-and-start duty cycles or utility trucks that could use the system as a powerful mobile generator to work quietly and efficiently in areas where noise was a factor.
In hindsight, the hybrid truck’s early development was fortuitous as it provided both automobile and truck manufacturers a weapon to counter escalating fuel prices at the end of the decade. Today, research into hybrid technology is accelerating, and every month it seems yet another automotive or heavy-duty truck manufacturer is adding a new hybrid model to its lineup.
But the hybrid market remains small compared to the huge volume of conventional gasoline and diesel powertrains sold every year. Why aren’t we seeing more hybrids on the road? The answer: You are – and you will.
“The hybrid truck market is definitely growing and has been over the past couple of years due to the increase in availability of these systems,” says Dimitri Kazarinoff, vice president and general manager of Eaton Hybrid Power Systems, a pioneering developer of hybrid technology. “We’ve also been expanding the applicability of the system to different specific vocations, and that’s helped to drive up adoption.”
Still, Kazarinoff says, hybrid numbers remain small in terms of overall penetration. “In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a doubling of hybrid volume in North America,” he says. “This year will probably do somewhere around a 60 to 75 percent increase on top of that. We’re seeing significant growth, albeit from a small base.”
That number currently is less than 1 percent of the overall market, according to David Bryant, vocational sales manager of hybrids for Freightliner Trucks. That’s largely because of the higher purchase price that hybrids currently demand. “The tipping point with hybrid trucks right now is in the componentry,” Bryant says. Because of the relatively low volumes being sold now, component costs remain high. “As we continue to see higher usage, the economies of scale will tip, and costs will go down.”
The big payback
In some cases, hybrid trucks cost as much as 60 percent more than a truck with a conventional powertrain. That’s enough of a premium to make even the most green-minded truck buyer balk.
The cost of the hybrid system and components and subsequent pricing remains a major inhibitor at the moment, says Darren Gosbee, director of electric vehicle and hybrid powertrain product development for Navistar. “The decision to purchase a hybrid truck really comes back to one thing, and that’s payback.” For Gosbee, that payback can be from either incentives or fuel economy – or both.
