Freightliner Explores Semi-Truck Efficiency

While the millions of brand new passenger cars zipping around typically employ a smorgasbord of modern technologies aimed at reducing fuel consumption and emissions, the millions of heavy trucks hauling things (like brand new cars) from the continents railway depots and ports to our local shops are hardly what one would call “economical.” Granted, there have been massive breakthroughs in recent years, however, they are still gargantuan, hulking beasts.

But Freightliner recently debuted what they are referring to as the “Innovation Truck;” a concept aimed at rethinking the tractor trailer combination. Using a Freighliner Cascadia tractor (the company’s most aerodynamic model) as the basis, the Innovation truck uses many of the technologies we’ve come to take for granted in our passenger vehicles. Enhanced aerodynamics mean the typically massive billboard side view mirrors have been replaced with cameras, while the entire underbody has been fitted with a drag-reducing skin panels. A front air splitter and rear wing keep the air flowing smoothly over the tractor trailer combination, and both rear axles are faired in with a nearly complete spat system.

Under operation, the Innovation Truck utilizes a new climate control system that runs off a second bank of batteries, allowing operators to keep their climate control systems operating without idling; an important piece of technology when your driver’s seat is your office and a sleeper your home. Furthermore, the adaptive air suspension lowers itself at speed to reduce airflow underneath the truck’s body. However, perhaps most interesting is the GPS-enabled cruise control system that accurately controls speed by taking into account the variations in terrain traversed. By maintaining a speed bracket that is always within 6% of the set speed, the predictive cruise control system plots the road’s terrain for a mile ahead, and computes which speed is most economical within the bracket. Speeding up on the downhills to allow for more momentum up them, all these technologies should be appearing on Freightliner’s more upscale trucks in the near future.