The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Argonne National Laboratory to lead a consortium of university, private sector and national laboratory partners for a new, medium- and heavy-duty truck technical track under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC) Truck Research Utilizing Collaborative Knowledge (TRUCK) program. The multidisciplinary consortium includes Cummins Inc., Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation, Ohio State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Michigan. The program will address cost-effective measures to improve on-road freight efficiency of medium- and heavy-duty trucks by greater than 50 percent compared to today’s vehicles. In the United States, freight hauling by truck accounts for more than 15 percent of our oil use, and nearly 60 percent in China. The U.S. consortium will work with counterparts in China to leverage the technological research capabilities of both countries.
The team’s work will focus on advanced internal combustion engines and powertrain systems; energy management (such as system-level efficiency improvements); hybrid electric powertrains; key truck technologies such as light weighting and aerodynamics; and applied research, testing and evaluation to better explore and improve the operating efficiency of medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Once the award is finalized, the non-federal partners in the U.S. consortium will match or exceed DOE funding of $12.5 million for a total effort of $25 million or more. The consortium and its Chinese counterparts will bolster collaborative efforts for state-of-the-art technologies to improve freight efficiency that will reduce carbon emissions and lower fuel costs for companies and drivers. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, with its consortium partners, has pledged an equivalent amount of resources, bringing the total bilateral effort to $50 million over 5 years.
Argonne National Laboratory currently serves as the U.S. lead institution for the CERC Clean Vehicle Consortium (CERC-CVC), which aims to be the leading United States-China effort in the clean vehicle arena by performing both long-range transformational and translational research to bring discoveries and technologies to market.