Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2024 - 18

Hydrogen
'inevitable'
FOR COMMERCIAL
VEHICLES
With battery charging
infrastructure still spotty and
corporate carbon-reduction targets
looming, the CV sector increases
interest in low-carbon fuels.
by Bill Visnic
PROPULSION FEATURE
The Cummins
HELM 15-liter
engine platform
is designed to be
" fuel-agnostic, "
which includes
accommodating
hydrogen.
W
ith the perception of diesel engines as bad actors in the
worldwide transportation-emissions crackdown, the commercial-vehicle
sector is racing to identify and develop propulsion
technologies that will simultaneously reduce its emissions
" profile " and help OEMs and engine makers achieve new and ambitious
carbon-reduction targets. Most industry players would like battery-electric
propulsion to be the ultimate solution, but for now, many commercialvehicle
duty cycles and an unforming recharging infrastructure mean
battery-electric propulsion for many types of medium- and heavy-duty
vehicles isn't a workable solution.
New low-carbon fuels - and particularly hydrogen - are the answer
until batteries and the charging infrastructure get better, concluded
most panelists speaking in the " Heavy & Medium-Duty
Technologies " panel session at SAE International's 2024 Government/
Industry Meeting in Washington, DC in January 2024. But even " clean "
liquid fuels and hydrogen face steep adoption curves, a chief reason
being their own nascent supply and refueling networks.
The industry's OEMs and suppliers need propulsion technology
that can " allow customers to succeed regardless of infrastructure
status, " said John Pendray, Cummins senior technical advisor for
technology development. He said the CV sector doesn't want to wait
a decade for battery EV maturity - " any fuel that anyone can bring
to the table that's low-carbon " is an actionable option, he claimed.
Low-carbon fuels and hydrogen, many panel speakers said, enable
the use of existing internal-combustion engines that are capable of
satisfying medium- and heavy-duty truck duty cycles - and ideally
can be " drop-in " substitutes for diesel and gasoline, meaning the
18 April 2024
new fuels could use the existing universal refueling
infrastructure. Hydrogen, meanwhile, can fuel either
modified IC engines or fuel-cell electric trucks.
" Hydrogen is inevitable, " asserted Mohammad
Fatouraie, director of system engineering in the Bosch
Powertrain Solutions division. " Hydrogen is going to
happen. But for it to become competitive is going to
take a while. " A current problem for hydrogen, he
said, is " having it available at a place that it's needed
for fleets. "
Holistic energy approaches
" We need to think a little differently about the paradigm
we design from, " Fatouraie added. He said that
Bosch has developed a vehicle energy-management
case study based on a fully loaded medium-duty pickup
truck. The goal is the same range and performance
for a zero-emissions variant when compared to one
with a conventional ICE powertrain.
The exercise, he said, is to force a process that embraces
a holistic engineering approach rather than focusing
on optimizing individual systems. The study intersects
powertrain, thermal management and " powernet "
- a link to ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems)
and infotainment systems - and at their intersection
derives Vehicle Energy Management, or VEM.
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
CUMMINS
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - April 2024

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