Hej Martin,

could you e-mail the links to your reports on the NL trials of higher productivity vehicles

to the “road-transport-technology” distribution? I very often refer to your 1995 - 2010

summary from 2009, the best paper ever written on the subject in Europe. And I know

you have two more reports in the pipe-line.

All the best,

Anders

Scania is continuing trials of short (30 cm) boat-tails on semitrailers in actual transport operations.

In Sweden and Denmark only, it turned out to be much too complicated to get permission in

Germany and the Netherlands, unfortunately. Results will be openly published once we get

one year of data.

Hello John,

Allthough in Europe we’ve always had more smaller cars than you have in New Zealand, in Europe (further) downsizing is a new big trend in the car industry. In the Netherlands both smaller cars, smaller engines and hybrids are very popular, also due to fiscal stimulation. All European car manufacturers introduce smaller 4-3 and even 2 cylinder engines, with sometimes performances (due to one or two turbo’s) that exceed the older bigger engines and a fuel consumption that is far lower. Here is an example of a very popular 2 cylinder car at the moment. It still does 173 km/h and 0-100 in 11 seconds.

Even the largest Mercedes is now available with a four cylinder engine and yet the driver does not lack performance, even in Germany with no speed limit on its highways. However, the models that go to the USA (and maybe Australia and New Zealand too?) are still with heavier engines, and often 6 or more cylinders. But, as stated before, cars are heavily taxed in most European countries.

European trucks are less “macho” in appearance, but also here you can see the trucking people getting very excited about heavy engines that, especially in our flat country with very high fuel prices (diesel is now over 1,25 Euro per litre) and a lot of congestion, you really do not need the heavier engines. I believe that if we would not have had an aggressive tax system, we would have liked to have bigger cars, we saw that in the last 10 years when even Hummers were popular here. So I guess it’s largely a cultural thing on one hand (what we primarily want), versus a price stimulus. And given the result this price policy in Europe seems to work, for passenger cars at least.

It seems that “over here” truck drivers are stimulated more to drive economically. And a number of truck operators are introducing LNG trucks, BIO gas and diesel and even the first hybrid’s are being introduced, in combination with electrical, hybid and CNG delivery vans.

From a regulatory point of view the focus in Europe was more on cleaner engines, rather than economical engines. It even costs more fuel to get the exhaust fumes leave the system in a cleaner way.

As I mentioned in my presentation last year in Melbourne, high capacity trucks are a sensitive subject and in all aspects the road transport industry is not given many possibilities to perform more economically: transport outside your home country in Europe is restricted to three trips, individual member states install road charges (next to diesel tax) for trucks and cities introduce all kinds of “custom made” restrictions for freight. Still no sign of more possibilities for aerodynamic trucks or after sales parts that do not reduce the payload. Fear of a “negative modal shift” seems to hold lobbyists, politicians and policy makers in a dead lock.

High capacity vehicles have been trialed for ten years now in the Netherlands (max 60 tonnes, 25 metres) and a decision will be made this year if we are going to allow them on a permanent and regular basis. The monitoring reports on safety and environment are very positive, shippers and transporters are enthusiastic about the possibilities and the trailer builders design new solutions for lighter and smarter parts very rapidly.

So this seems a very quick and cheap way of reducing fuel consumption and other costly aspects, like drivers and trucks. At least for a part of the transport market: high volumes on routes that use mostly highways.

Best Regards,

Martin Salet

Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment
Directorate General Mobility  | Directorate Road Infrastructure and Traffic Safety
P.O. Box 20901 | 2500EX The Hague | The Netherlands

Office: Plesmanweg 1-6 | Room E 0.03 | The Hague
+31.70.456 1421

Dear IFRTT Forum subscriber

Greetings and best wishes for the New Year from the antipodes. 

In the past this forum has been used to discuss technical issues of interest to, at least, some of the subscribers.  In recent times, apart from the monthly newsletters, it has become primarily a bulletin board for advertising conferences, courses and jobs.  While this function is important and useful I think it is a shame that the forum’s role in promoting discussions and exchanges of ideas has declined.  So to try to promote some revival of the discussion function I thought I would present a few ideas on an issue that subscribers may agree or disagree with in the hope that you will express your views in responses via the forum.

Current concerns about climate change are driving substantial efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the most obvious step is to improve fuel efficiency.  Recent weather events in various part of the world have heightened these concerns.  Even if you don’t accept the climate change argument it is indisputable that fossil fuels are a finite resource and we owe it to future generations not to waste this resource.  Although the vehicle manufacturers are putting substantial resources into technological solutions to address the issue, there are a number of measures that can be implemented right now using existing technology that can have a significant impact on fuel consumption.

For light vehicles the most obvious measure is downsizing the vehicles.  In New Zealand (and in many the other countries) the average size of vehicles has steadily increased over the years and as a result the benefits of the fuel efficiency gains achieved by the manufacturers have been partially eroded.  In New Zealand the average vehicle occupancy is 1.6 people and the maximum speed limit is 100km/h.  Both of these requirements are easily accommodated by the smallest cars on the market so why are there so many larger cars?  Safety is a factor.  Although many small cars have excellent safety performance, the barrier crash tests effectively simulate a collision with an identical vehicle.  If a small car collides with a substantially larger car Newtonian mechanics dictate that the occupants of the small car will experience greater decelerations and are more likely to suffer injuries even if the safety performance of the small car is inherently better than that of the large car.  If everybody else drives a small car you are much safer in a large car.  However, safety is not the only factor.  The most popular large car in New Zealand is available with either a V6 or a V8 engine.  The two vehicles are the same size and virtually identical in appearance but the V8 option is 24% more powerful and uses nearly 26% more fuel.  The V6 option has more than enough power for the vehicle to perform its functions yet a significant proportion of sales are for the V8 option.  Why?

With heavy commercial vehicles, paradoxically, both upsizing and downsizing can improve fuel efficiency.  Upsizing through increasing vehicle size and weight limits reduces the amount of fuel required per tonne-km of payload.  Various initiatives are in progress in different jurisdictions and we will not discuss these further here.  However, for a given transport task there are fuel efficiency opportunities in better matching the engine power and transmission configuration to the transport task.  Erik Dahlberg presented a paper on this topic at our last symposium in Melbourne with an example that showed a fuel efficiency gain of 3.4% compared to the standard vehicle used for the task.  Generally this means downsizing the engine power.  In New Zealand the maximum allowable gross combination weight for general access is 44 tonnes and this has not changed for more than 20 years.  The speed limit for heavy vehicles is 90km/h.  20 years ago the typical maximum weight combination had a 350-450hp engine.  Today the typical engine power for new 44 tonnes vehicles is 500-600hp.  The New Zealand roading environment is relatively hilly and so there are potential travel time benefits from increased engine power.  However, I believe these are overstated as we will see in the next paragraph.

The other way in which substantial gains in fuel efficiency can be achieved is through driver training.  Last year the New Zealand Ministry of Transport sponsored the development and introduction of a driver training programme for fuel efficiency called SAFED-NZ (Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving).  This programme is based on a similar programme of the same name developed in the UK and the introduction to New Zealand involved getting one of the developers of the UK programme to come to New Zealand to train a group of senior driving instructors.  These senior driving instructors will both deliver the programme and train other driving instructors on how to deliver the programme.  The basic principles of the SAFED driving are very simple and one would think obvious to any experienced driver.  Yet even this very experienced group of driver trainers achieved an average improvement in fuel efficiency of 5% from undertaking the course.  This is based on before and after measurements on a 40km test circuit.  Significantly the average travel time for the “after” circuit was 6% less than that on the “before” circuit.  That is, not only did the drivers use less fuel (and by implication less average engine power) they also achieved a higher average speed.  This result is based on a very small sample and cannot be generalised but it does suggest that the negative impacts on travel time of a fuel efficient driving style and lower engine power will be small.

Although these savings in fuel consumption may appear quite modest they have a substantial impact on profitability.  In New Zealand there is no road tax on diesel (road user charges are collected separately) and so fuel is relatively cheap.  Nevertheless, depending on the type of transport operation, fuel represents 15-20% of total costs.  In countries that collect road user charges through fuel tax it will be significantly higher proportion (perhaps double).  A 5% reduction in fuel consumption can increase profits by about 1% of turnover.  Trucking in New Zealand is a very competitive business and many operators’ profits are less than 5% of turnover, hence this represents a 20% increase in profit, which is very significant.

With an economic incentive of this magnitude we might expect an immediate large scale uptake of these measures by the industry but this has not happened.  A number of operators here have seen the opportunities and are implementing driver training for fuel efficiency programmes and looking at vehicle selection policies but many others are not.  This raises the obvious question; why not?  My personal view is that they don’t believe the results apply to them.  Specifically they don’t believe that their drivers can reduce their fuel consumption significantly; they don’t believe that fuel-efficient driving practices will not substantially increase trip times; they don’t believe that fitting lower-powered engines will save fuel; and they don’t believe that using lower-powered engines will not substantially increase trip times.

As I said at the outset one of my aims in writing this is to try to stimulate a discussion.  Some people may think I have got it all wrong.  Please say so and why.  Others may think the situation in their country is completely different.  Again I am very interested to hear how it is different and particularly why it is different.

Regards to you all,

John de Pont

***************************************************************
The ROAD-TRANSPORT-TECHNOLOGY mailing list is published by

International Forum for Road Transport Technology

***************************************************************

Dit bericht kan informatie bevatten die niet voor u is bestemd. Indien u niet de geadresseerde bent of dit bericht abusievelijk aan u is toegezonden, wordt u verzocht dat aan de afzender te melden en het bericht te verwijderen. De Staat aanvaardt geen aansprakelijkheid voor schade, van welke aard ook, die verband houdt met risico's verbonden aan het elektronisch verzenden van berichten.
This message may contain information that is not intended for you. If you are not the addressee or if this message was sent to you by mistake, you are requested to inform the sender and delete the message. The State accepts no liability for damage of any kind resulting from the risks inherent in the electronic transmission of messages.

***************************************************************
The ROAD-TRANSPORT-TECHNOLOGY mailing list is published by

International Forum for Road Transport Technology

***************************************************************