Bergstrom on Tuesday, Jan. 29, announced a collaboration with a relatively new company to the trucking market — Firefly Energy. Together, the two will test and co-market Bergstrom’s Nite no-idle thermal system alongside Firefly Energy’s Oasis BCI Group 31 truck battery.
Through the agreement, the two organizations will provide the trucking industry “with a powerful one-two solution to achieving long-lasting sleeper cab comfort, fuel savings and pollution reduction,” says Mil Ovan, senior vice president of Peoria, Ill.-based Firefly Energy.
On its own, the Nite system is engineered to virtually eliminate overnight truck idling, using 0.03 to 0.06 gallons of diesel fuel per hour to keep a trucker’s sleeper compartment continuously warm all night. Meanwhile, Firefly’s Oasis battery is designed to deliver deeper, more reliable discharges and faster recharges, and to save on battery weight and size, while providing up to 50 percent longer run times when powering accessories that comprise a truck’s hotel loads.
The agreement with Firefly to use the Oasis battery will allow drivers to “simply switch on power for their sleeper cab’s A/C and shut off their engine overnight,” says Terry Ziegler, vice president and general manager of electrified products for Rockford, Ill.-based Bergstrom.
The Oasis battery will be displayed at next week’s American Trucking Associations TMC Annual Meting & Transportation Exhibition, being held Monday-Thursday, Feb. 4-7, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. Visitors can see the battery at the Firefly Energy booth (No. 2928) and in Bergstrom’s booth (No. 2921).
