Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2023 - 4

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
Smart engineering for sustainability
Sustainability extends beyond just decarbonization.
A term popping up more
and more in executive and engineeringfocused
presentations is " circular economy, "
referring to a closed-loop production
cycle that seeks to minimize resource
inputs and reduce or eliminate
waste and emissions.
Case in point: Rob Zemenchik, CNH
Industrial's Sr. Manager for Product
Sustainability, said at the SAE COMVEC
conference in September that the company
specifically seeks projects that
deliver on circularity in the product lifecycle.
CNH Industrial's roadmap to hit its
2030 and 2050 climate targets includes
more than 150 specific projects, ranging
from powertrains to hydraulics, he said.
One of the " early success stories " is its
work with British company Bennaman
on an on-farm liquid fugitive biomethane
production process.
" Biodigestion is not new, but the cost
was always too high. You had physical
structures that were very capital intensive, "
he said. Bennaman developed a
" low-cost " lagoon cover that captures
fugitive methane from livestock manure
and converts it to automotive-grade
CNG and LNG that reportedly is a " better-than-zero-carbon "
biofuel.
Methane impacts global warming by
more than 80 times that of CO2
over a
20-year period, according to the United
Nations Economic Commission for
Europe. " Cows, which are often indicted
as culprits in global warming, can now be
part of the solution, " Zemenchik asserted.
(Thus, cows on this issue's cover, alongside
the New Holland T7 Methane Power
LNG tractor.) " We can now do this with
less than a five-year payback in a system
that lasts up to 20 years, " he said.
Speakers on the " Smart Engineering
for Sustainability " executive roundtable
at COMVEC addressed how their companies
prioritize their technology portfolios.
Engineers need to be economists and perform
what-if scenarios for strategic planning,
said Tim Frazier, VP of Research and
Technology at Cummins. " As economists
4 October 2023
you have to start thinking about what are
the minimum set of building blocks that
we need to assemble resilient solutions for
our customer base. It doesn't mean we're
going to take them all into production, but
we're building technology capability [for
when] the future becomes clearer. "
Rakesh Aneja, head of eMobility for
Daimler Trucks North America, replied:
" The engineer in me wants to do everything.
The reality is that [we have] finite
resources, both financial and even more
importantly, people. " Regulations and
customer demand are two factors to
consider, as is balancing between nearand
long-term solutions. Hydrogen
technology - both fuel cells and combustion
engines - will play a complementary
role, he said, but in the U.S. it's
at least a " couple years " behind the
battery-electric ecosystem.
A " trifecta " of conditions is required
for successful decarbonization, Aneja
said: viable product solutions, TCO parity,
which is " not where it needs to be "
but is improving, and dependable
charging/refueling infrastructure, which
is lagging. " We have several batteryelectric
vehicles in production today.
The initial acquisition price of those vehicles
is two to three times the cost of a
comparable diesel vehicle, " he said.
Don Hillebrand, division director at
Argonne National Laboratory, referenced
a recent meeting he attended
where people from both the utilities and
OEMs agreed that the infrastructure is at
least five years behind where BEVs are.
" That's probably a true statement, " he
said. " It's building up very quickly, but
infrastructure moves slower than the
needs of our vehicle fleets. "
But why wait? posited Frazier. " If we
leverage low-carbon fuels, liquid fuels,
hydrogen and renewable grids, we can
take about 1.4 gigatons of CO2
out of the
environment, ahead of waiting for [widespread]
grid infrastructure. That's the
equivalent of taking every truck off the
street for three years. Not a bad goal. "
Ryan Gehm, Editor-in-Chief
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
Ryan Gehm
Editor-in-Chief
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Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - October 2023

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