Saturday, October 25th, 2008
There was a time not long ago when hybrid trucks were going to rule the world of commercial vehicles — if you believed the predictions.
Now that elections on both sides of the border are occupying our attention, we’re hearing lots more predictions, and we all have to be wary about which ones we choose to believe — whether they are political in nature, or commercial.
Back in May, 2003, with gasoline in the United States hovering around $1.50 a U.S. gallon, FedEx, the package delivery giant, was predicting that it alone would have 30,000 hybrid trucks on the road in just a few years. The New York Times revisited that prediction this past summer, and did a count. It found that today in the U.S., all companies together have only about 300 hybrids on the road.
The FedEx prediction was an easy one to believe. Stop-and-go traffic is one place hybrids excel, and that’s where you’ll find delivery trucks. They operate many hours every day and a travel a long way in a year, and that multiplies the opportunities for saving fuel. And with gasoline now in the range of $3 a U.S. gallon and up (with diesel somewhat higher), the shift to hybrids should be well under way by now. It isn’t.
Well, Kevin Beaty, manager of hybrid power systems for the Eaton Corp., which makes hybrid delivery trucks and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, notes that production of hybrids is limited. That means there are few economies of scale, so the price premium for a hybrid is still pretty hefty.
That a delivery truck that costs $40,000 as an ordinary diesel will sell for about $70,000 as a hybrid. That’s a stiff price, and a FedEx spokesman said the company has calculated that, with $3 gasoline, the payback period would be 20 years.
The upshot is that FedEx still has only about 100 hybrids operating. Its big competitor, UPS, has a handful. Coca Cola has a few. A few city utilities have a hybrid or two. The U.S. military is doing some experimentation.
Heavy hybrids are much more scarce than the light duty truck and medium-duty truck, and are likely to remain so for a while yet.
It’s not that hybrids don’t work; they do. But for most users, the price is just too steep, the pay-back time just too long, and after crunching numbers, people are opting to stay with conventional technology.
Widespread adoption of hybrid truck technologies thus will have to await some sort of incentive programs from governments, and, given the current economic uncertainty, it’s tough to see that happening anytime soon.
In the meantime, research goes on, driven by the certain need to reduce environmental damage. That’s what’s behind everything done at places like the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
There, scientists are paying a lot of attention to ways to improve both diesel engines and diesel fuel — working to improve upon existing technologies.
More stringent emissions standards have already led to improvements, and that work will continue in the expectation that emissions will be even more tightly regulated in the future. The ultimate objective is near-zero-emission engines burning sophisticated liquid fuels.
If that can be done at a price the market considers reasonable, it will be an important step.
In the meantime, the lab is working on advanced heavy hybrid systems, along with most heavy duty truck manufacturers. The research is moving into the marketplace, but slowly, so no one is even close to high-volume production.
So while it seems likely that the price premium for hybrids will come down, it will be a slow process. And until it does, making a solid business case for hybrids will be difficult for most companies.
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
How should freight be transported overland with minimal environmental impact? This question has been focussing the mind of legislators around the world for some time and is likely to do so for decades to come. While water, rail and air transport all have roles to play, road transport has proved to be the most cost effective means of moving goods across land, as far as businesses and consumers are concerned.
Truck manufacturing is a relatively small sector within the automotive industry, driven more by business pragmatism than consumer choice, although businesses, as the principal consumers, are able to exercise considerably more control than individual consumers when it comes to determining price. Tough competition brings narrow margins, which ensure that truck manufacturing is not a highly profitable business.
The long-term trend in heavy trucks has been for gross vehicle weights (GVW) – the total weight of the vehicle plus its load – to increase gradually over the past 20 years. This means that over time, the overall number of heavy trucks on the roads of the developed nations has fallen. In this respect it has been a triumph of efficiency, but inevitably has added to the financial pressures on manufacturers, who have seen sales decline as a result.
At the same time, controls on vehicle emissions, both exhaust and noise have progressively tightened in developed countries. Trucks around the world are almost exclusively diesel powered and diesel engines have attracted particular attention for their exhaust emissions. As some of the largest diesel powered vehicles, trucks have been an easy target for environmentalists. But the picture is changing rapidly, as we will discuss later. Legislators have yet to home in on safety issues in the way they have done concerning passenger cars, but the way in which trucks could develop over the next five to ten years is likely to influence this significantly.
Outside the developed markets of Western Europe, the United States and Japan, the awakening economies of Asia and China will ensure that the global demand for transport will not slacken. As consumers in those countries enjoy greater prosperity, it is consumer goods such as televisions, refrigerators, audio systems and computers that will be affordable long before cars. And consumer goods need transport.
How are truck manufacturers addressing the cost, legislative and environmental pressures? How many of them are likely to survive into the future? What emissions standards are currently in force in the major markets and what impact will impending changes have on the vehicles? What is driving future truck development besides these issues? It is these questions that we will attempt to answer in this report.
References to commercial vehicles in the report will usually mean those exceeding 6.0 tonnes gross vehicle weight. Vehicles of this weight and above are generally beyond the reach of drivers licensed to drive passenger cars so can be seen as business tools rather than as means of personal transport. As a rough guide, light duty trucks are usually those below around 7.5 tonnes GVW, medium duty trucks between 7.5 tonnes and around 17-tonnes GVW and heavy duty trucks, all road going models above that weight. This includes all long haul articulated models.
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Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
First of all, the continual flourishing sales of heavy-duty trucks are beyond the expectation of many analysts. Undoubtedly, heavy-duty trucks became the largest highlight in the market for motor vehicles during the first quarter, their sales added up to 167,232 sets with a year-on-year growth rate of 58.70 percent, thus making trucks the type with the largest growth margin in the respective markets for the 4 major types of motor vehicles and the only type having seen an increase of market shares. During the first quarter, altogether 29,953 heavy-duty trucks were sold with a growth rate of 72.78 percent year on year.
During the first quarter, altogether 62,085 semi-trailer towing vehicles were sold and the year-on-year growth rate amounted to 46.85 percent, making semi-trailer towing vehicles a type with the lowest growth rate of distribution among three types of heavy-duty trucks. The main reasons include that the demands for such a type of heavy-duty trucks increased too rapidly last year and that the base was excessively large. In the market for semi-trailer towing vehicles, the growth rate and proportion of the demands for such series of quasi-towing vehicles with a total mass larger than 25 tons and no more than 40 tons are the largest. It can be said that any enterprise seizing the market for trucks falling into those series of heavy-duty trucks with such a tonnage will grasp the market for semi-towing vehicles as a whole.
In general, during the first quarter of 2008, the nationwide distributions of heavy-duty trucks presented a characteristic of “rising rapidly”, which was certainly related to such factors concerning the economic construction as that greater efforts were made on the transportation of coal for purpose of electricity power generation and that a lot of projects will be launched between February and May each year. Various projects under construction, including the project at Caofeidian in the periphery of Tangshan, the Project of Jingtang Port, the construction project of the Iron and Steel Plant of Shougang Jingtang United Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., and the preliminary project of land development at a new seashore district, have driven the blooming demands in the market for heavy-duty trucks during the first quarter.
Secondly, the charging policy of charging by weight was spread and put into practice. By the end of 2007, a system of charging by weight had been put in practice on expressways more than 20 provinces and municipalities and the proportion of the mileage of expressways on which a system of charging by weight was implemented amounted to 88 percent of the total mileage of all expressways. It can be said that the system of charging by weight can radically promote the sale of heavy-duty trucks in a long run and have “revolutionary” influences on the market for heavy-duty trucks.
During the first quarter of the year, medium duty trucks ranked the lowest among all the four major types of trucks in terms of the growth rate in the market; and altogether 56,167 medium trucks were sold with a small-scale year-on-year growth margin of 6.09 percent while the market shares for medium trucking decreased by 1.69 percentage points. Altogether 32,314 medium duty trucks for sale with a growth margin of 12.15 percent during the first quarter of the year. In the market for medium trucks, the growth margin for demands for such trucks amounted to as high as 146.77 percent though the proportion of those series of medium trucks with a total gross mass larger than 12 tons but no more than 14 tons; such a phenomenon shows substantially that due to the influence of operating costs, certain medium trucks with a large tonnage begin to receive favors in the market this year.
During the first quarter of the year, the market for light duty trucks for sale maintained a fairly rapid growth rate. Certain experts hold that at the beginning of 2008, various manufacturers of light duty trucks made adjustments to prices of their products, the prices of respective types were raised by more than RMB3, 000 yuan and less than RMB3, 500 yuan, and clients’ expectation that vehicle prices will continue to rise in the future has resulted in the fact that dealers stock up while end users conduct scare buying.
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Thursday, October 9th, 2008
North American diesel engine production is taking a short breather in 2000 after impressive gains over the last five years. Including a slight decline in 1996 (-0.8 percent), the growth from 1995 to 1999 was over 33 percent. Not surprisingly, the on-highway diesel engine production (for trucks, buses and coaches) dominates North American production.
In 1995, on-highway production was 74 percent of the total North American diesel engine production compared to 78.5 percent in 1999 and a forecasted 78.8 percent for 2000. In other words, as on-highway goes, so goes the total.
The premium heavy-duty Class 8 diesel production is expected to decline at least 25 percent in 2000 compared to the peak of 331,000 in 1999. Medium-duty diesels traditionally follow heavies by three to six months and are forecasted down at least 10 percent in 2000. The wild card in the diesel engine production formula has been light-duty. Growth in light-duty diesels for 2000 was less than 5 percent but enough to threaten the predicted downturn of the total market.
In 2000 truck market was faced many major problems; new truck overselling creating a used truck for sale, a continuing lack of qualified drivers, rising interest rates and the price of diesel fuel.So what will change in 2001?
Probably not much. We predict little change in 2001 for the heavy-duty truck and medium-duty truck markets. We feel both will continue to be weak in line with their performance in the last half of 2000. If the market was worried about the overselling in 1997 creating a used truck glut in 2000, take a good look at the heavy- and medium-duty truck for sale in 1998 and 1999. Last year was the peak for both markets and 1998 increased more than 10 percent compared to 1997.
The major fleets will have to purchase new trucks sooner or later, which will help stop the truck order free fall currently being experienced. Fuel prices may stabilize, but a per barrel price of $28 (mentioned as a good stopping point by OPEC and many analysts) will be more than twice the price we were enjoying only six months ago. Wars in the Middle East could ignite and fuel supply could send prices well above the $28 level — it currently is in the high $30 range. Interest rates are another variable that could be influenced by energy prices as well. Inflation based on energy prices could result in higher interest rates, although most analysts are predicting current rates to stay stable over the next year.
The driver shortage will continue with more women and mid-20s and younger drivers in the workforce. This is not a new problem for the major fleets and will probably affect the transmission selection (with a greater emphasis on automated manuals and automatics) more than the truck demand.
Light-duty truck diesels are a refreshing contrast. Currently, 3 percent to 4 percent of the Class 1 through Class 3 truck factory sales are diesel. Many of the applications, under 8500 lb. GVW, are not potential for do-mestic diesels due to emissions regulations. However, that is all expected to change by the 2002 model year. We believe the light-duty market will level in 2001, but increased penetration will increase light-duty diesel production volume.
There are a number of new diesel engine models being developed for light-duty trucks by international for Ford, Isuzu for GM and Detroit Diesel and Cummins for DaimlerChrysler.heavy duty truck have some model that is Conventional truck, dump truck, crane truck, flatbed truck etc, and medium duty truck also have model van truck, wrecker tow truck, concrete truck etc. It now appears the Detroit Diesel Delta diesel will be the choice for trucks below the Dodge Ram, while Cummins continues to meet its supply contract for the Ram with its B series. In 2001, we forecast the on-highway diesel engine production in North America to increase almost 3 percent, despite declines in medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Light-duty diesels are expected to rise 12 percent, which equates to 64,000 engines. Although dominant (79.1 percent of the total for 2001), on-highway diesels are not the only application in North America.so here we give some models of heavy medium and light duty truck.if you want more knowledge and information than website gives in detail.
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