Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/805422
36 | Overdrive | April 2017 DRIVE TEST I f you want to drive a $2 million vehicle, you've got about two options: Jay Leno's 1955 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing Coupe with his 1986 Lamborghini Countach in tow, or Volvo's SuperTruck. I took the latter. Volvo debuted its SuperTruck at the U.S. Department of Energy late last year, the fruits of its $40 million 50/50 partnership with DOE. The hardware – not counting the engine, pow- ertrain and certain compo- nents – cost $2 million, says Keith Brantley, Volvo Trucks' lead project manager for advanced complete vehicles. The SuperTruck program's goal was to boost freight efficiency by 50 percent, and Volvo's SuperTruck hit 88 percent. Fuel efficiency improved 70 percent; some test runs topped 13 mpg. Also, SuperTruck converts about 8 percent more of its fuel to usable power, based on a powertrain brake thermal efficiency that reached 50 percent in some tests. Weight savings and aero Brantley says that even with all of the fabrication, 75 percent of the truck can be found on today's Volvos. "The other 25 percent, we just did better and smarter," he says. "The plan was to make it as aerodynamic as possible using a production truck." An aluminum frame cuts chassis weight by almost half, but the truck still feels rigid. I couldn't tell the difference traveling up and down North Carolina's Interstate 40. SuperTruck, sporting wide single tires, is about 3,200 pounds lighter than a stan- dard truck, quite an accom- plishment considering that the additional fairings and other componentry boosted its weight. The roof, hood and side fairings are made from carbon fiber material. Trailer fairings, developed by SuperTruck partner Ridge Corp., were built from com- posite materials for stiffness and durability. Turbo-compounding 11-liter, powertrain With weight and aerodynam- ic improvements, the truck requires less engine power, so a D11 engine was used in place of a standard D13. The program also turned into a validation platform for a new turbo-compounding system designed to recover wasted energy from the tur- bocharger and apply it to the driveline. Volvo debuted turbo-compounding on its 2017 D13 production model engine, which the company says helps boost fuel efficien- cy by up to 6.5 percent. SuperTruck also allowed engineers to test a revised wave piston design and an optimized com- mon-rail fuel system that together help achieve a quiet- Volvo's SuperTruck achievements in weight, aerodynamics and visibility pave the way for tomorrow's design. BY JASON CANNON The SuperTruck profile is mostly a VNL 670, but its wider stance comes from a rear wall borrowed from a 780, which helped create a rear chassis flare that improves air movement down the trailer's side. That flare was put into production trucks with the 2016 model year, along with enhancements to the bumper and roof fairings of VNL highway tractors. 'Better and smarter'