Environmental Protection Agency

What’s not to like about lower fuel costs and reduced emissions?

Chuck Coppa and Lyle Jensen with Freightliner Coronado retrofit to run and natural gas and diesel fuel

With diesel prices at all-time highs, the American Power Group Inc. is hoping its dual-fuel approach to heavy-duty trucking results in greater interest among owner-operators and small fleets.

The $25,000 retrofit substitutes one of two diesel tanks on a Class 8 tractor with natural gas and uses software to make the two fuels work together, saving money at the pump and reducing emissions.

APG sees turbocharging natural gas in a diesel engine as an alternative for owner-operators and small fleets...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/whats-not-to-like-about-lower-fuel-costs-and-reduced-emissions

Truck Tech: Power booster edition

Truck Tech logo on blue background

For decades, a 12-volt battery system was just fine for running accessories on a commercial truck. Then came auxiliary power units to help with nighttime idling. With the dawn of electric and autonomous trucks — and stricter pollution regulations — get ready for 48-volt battery systems. 

Powering up

to 48-volt systems

We write a lot in this space about electric trucks and the high-voltage power systems that power them. There’s a lot of other power needs under the hood of a Class 8 commercial...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/truck-tech-power-booster-edition

Industry group sues California over truck pollution regulation timing

A Freightliner Cascadia on the highway

The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA) is suing the California Air Resources Board for moving too quickly to implement pollution regulation changes in the state. 

The EMA claims in a lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court in Central California that stringent emission standards, test procedures and other emission-related requirements adopted by the agency ignore the Clean Air Act provision that gives manufacturers at least four years to comply.

California adopted its...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/industry-group-sues-over-truck-pollution-regulation-timing

On Earth Day, ex-EPA head Whitman has message for freight industry

Earth and logistics icons overlay a landscape background for a questionnaire with former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman.

The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 following a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969. Now, 1 billion people across more than 190 countries mobilize annually to reduce pollution and its impacts on human health and protect the planet from irreversible climate change.

Companies in the freight industry are increasingly embracing strategies to reduce their carbon emissions and air pollution. Despite major strides — including multiple low and zero-emissions trucks under...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/on-earth-day-ex-epa-head-whitman-has-message-for-freight-industry

Truck Tech: Good versus the perfect edition

Is a measured approach to zero-emission trucking versus going all-in on electrification reversing the amorphism about the perfect being the enemy of the good? Also this week, add one autonomous trucking advisory board, and Cummins makes further natural gas engine inroads in a supply deal with Peterbilt.

Fooling with Voltaire

Voltaire’s memorable expression — the perfect is the enemy of the good — gets reversed when it comes to the rush to electric trucks versus a more deliberate transition from...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/truck-tech-good-versus-the-perfect-edition

CARB boss: California, feds could align on truck pollution rules

INDIANAPOLIS — California and the federal government could align on a single regulation for nitrogen oxide emissions from trucks, but the Environmental Protection Agency would have to pick the toughest of the options it laid out in proposed rulemaking.

“I think we are interested in the federal government being as aggressive as possible,” Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), told FreightWaves after an address to the Green Truck Summit at NTEA Work Truck Show on...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/carb-boss-california-feds-could-align-on-truck-pollution-rules

Anatomy of a truck order: Sometimes you just turn the page

Month after month, industry analysts report new Class 8 preliminary and net truck orders, snapshots of an industry in which peaks and valleys come about every two years of an economic cycle.

Preliminary orders don’t take into account orders that a fleet, or a manufacturer, might cancel for any number of reasons. Net orders, which follow the first cut by about 15 days, lock down a better read on what happened. The two numbers directionally correlate. Cancellations are a barometer of how customers...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/anatomy-of-a-truck-order-sometimes-you-just-turn-the-page

Trailer manufacturers win appeal in emissions case

Truck trailer manufacturers have won an appeal regarding federal emissions standards. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could end up saving their customers millions of dollars in higher trailer costs.

The court on Friday granted a petition initially filed in 2016 by the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA) and vacated all portions of a final rule on greenhouse gas emission standards set under the Obama administration that year that apply to...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/trailer-manufacturers-win-appeal-in-emissions-case

Navistar will destroy old engines, pay $52M to settle federal complaint

Navistar Inc. is settling Clean Air Act violations with the U.S. Justice Department by paying a $52 million fine and destroying old engines to prevent oxides of nitrogen (NOx) pollution from fouling the atmosphere.

Navistar, now a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG’s Traton Group, has borne the burden of deciding against using the selective catalyst reduction (SCR) form of emissions control that other truck makers adopted following tougher pollution rules going into effect in 2010.

In the Justice...

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/navistar-will-destroy-old-engines-pay-52m-to-settle-federal-complaint

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