Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2021 - 2

EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org

EDITORIAL

Ryan Gehm
Editor-in-Chief
Ryan.Gehm@sae.org
Lindsay Brooke
Senior Editor
Lindsay.Brooke@sae.org
Paul Seredynski
Senior Editor
Paul.Seredynski@sae.org

Highly motivated to lose weight
Mass reduction has long been a goal for
commercial-vehicle development programs. The reason is simple enough:
Less weight being lugged around in
vehicle components and subsystems
means more weight available for hauling payload. As medium- and heavyduty trucks become increasingly electrified, lightweighting takes on added significance, again for obvious reasons: to
compensate for heavy battery systems
and to maximize driving range.
Electric trucks are 2,500 to 5,000 lbs.
(1,133 to 2,268 kg) heavier than their
diesel counterparts for the same duty
cycle, according to the North American
Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE).
The group recently released an updated
Confidence Report on Lightweighting, a
follow-on to its original report published five years ago. The study team
wanted to learn about changes in lightweighting technologies in the past half
decade and to investigate the implications for commercial battery-electric
vehicles. More than 50 companies including fleets, tractor and trailer OEMs,
suppliers and technology companies
were interviewed.
The team found that current lightweighting activities align closely with
those of the Department of Energy's
SuperTruck program, with the cab and
frame being primary focus areas. A summary of the report states that aluminum
frame rails examined five years ago are
no longer available, but lightweight
frame crossmembers are becoming
more popular, with new developments
on the horizon. Also, both steel and aluminum wheel manufacturers have reduced wheel weight by 5 lbs. (2.2 kg)
since the last report in 2015. " That's quite
an achievement, " said NACFE executive
director Mike Roeth.

The study says a good metric for the
value of lightweighting technologies is
" dollar of upfront cost per pound of
weight saved. " It noted that different
market segments value lightweighting
differently. For example, average bulk
carriers will pay $6 to $11 for a component that weighs less, while reefer or
certain dry van dedicated routes will
pay $2 to $5, and general dry van
freight is $0 to $2. Achieving wide
adoption in market segments other
than bulk haulers is key for the future.
Weight reduction of about 2,000 lbs.
(907 kg) can be achieved with " a limited degree " of investment in lightweight technologies, while more aggressive investment can yield around
4,000 lbs. (1,814 kg) of savings. " Bulk
haulers will add the additional 4,000
lbs. to each trip as payload, which
could remove one in every 11 trucks
from the road, " the report states.
New materials and technologies
hitting the market or still in development will help accelerate weight reduction for areas beyond the cab and
frame. In this issue, a story on material
selection for electric-vehicle battery
enclosures (page 7) details some aluminum, steel, and polymer composite
designs that aim to keep weight down
while still satisfying durability and
thermal requirements. Expect a
mixed-material approach - one currently employed by Navistar for enclosures in its electric trucks, for example - to become more common in
future designs, experts agree.
And expect lightweighting efforts to
only intensify as truck manufacturers
increase BEV output in the next decade - and fleets become even more
motivated to invest in weight loss.
Ryan Gehm, Editor-in-Chief

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2 April 2021

TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2021
