Research on zero-emission heavy-duty trucking underscores the need for cross-sector collaboration

As a serious contributor to international carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, the transportation sector has immense potential to advance decarbonization. Nonetheless, a zero-emissions international provide chain requires re-imagining reliance on a heavy-duty trucking business that emits 810,000 tons of CO₂or 6 % of the USA’ greenhouse gasoline emissions, and consumes 29 billion gallons of diesel yearly within the U.S. alone.

A new study by MIT researchers, introduced on the latest American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2024 Worldwide Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computer systems and Data in Engineering Convention, quantifies the impression of a zero-emission truck’s design vary on its power storage necessities and operational income.

The multivariable mannequin outlined within the paper permits fleet house owners and operators to higher perceive the design decisions that impression the financial feasibility of battery-electric and hydrogen gasoline cell heavy-duty vehicles for industrial software, equipping stakeholders to make knowledgeable fleet transition choices.

“The whole issue (of decarbonizing trucking) is like a very big, messy pie. One of the things we can do, from an academic standpoint, is quantify some of those pieces of pie with modeling, based on information and experience we’ve learned from industry stakeholders,” says ZhiYi Liang, Ph.D. scholar on the renewable hydrogen staff on the MIT Okay. Lisa Yang World Engineering and Analysis Middle (GEAR) and lead writer of the research.

Co-authored by Bryony Dupont, visiting scholar at GEAR, and Amos Winter, the Germeshausen Professor within the MIT Division of Mechanical Engineering, the paper elucidates operational and socioeconomic elements that should be thought of in efforts to decarbonize heavy-duty automobiles (HDVs).

Operational and infrastructure challenges

The staff’s mannequin exhibits {that a} technical problem lies within the quantity of power that must be saved on the truck to satisfy the vary and towing efficiency wants of economic trucking purposes. As a result of high energy density and low value of diesel, current diesel drivetrains stay extra aggressive than different lithium battery-electric car (Li-BEV) and hydrogen fuel-cell-electric car (H2 FCEV) drivetrains.

Though Li-BEV drivetrains have the very best power effectivity of all three, they’re restricted to short-to-medium vary routes (beneath 500 miles) with low freight capability, as a result of weight and quantity of the onboard power storage wanted. As well as, the authors observe that current electrical grid infrastructure will want vital upgrades to help large-scale deployment of Li-BEV HDVs.

Whereas the hydrogen-powered drivetrain has a big weight benefit that permits larger cargo capability and routes over 750 miles, the present state of hydrogen gasoline networks limits financial viability, particularly as soon as operational value and projected income are taken into consideration.

Deployment will most definitely require authorities intervention within the type of incentives and subsidies to scale back the value of hydrogen by greater than half, in addition to continued funding by companies to make sure a secure provide. Additionally, as H2-FCEVs are nonetheless a comparatively new know-how, the continued design of conformal onboard hydrogen storage techniques—one in every of which is the topic of Liang’s Ph.D.—is essential to profitable adoption into the HDV market.

The present effectivity of diesel techniques is a results of technological developments and manufacturing processes established over many many years, a precedent that means comparable strides might be made with different drivetrains.

Nonetheless, interactions with fleet house owners, automotive producers, and refueling community suppliers reveal one other main hurdle in the way in which that every “slice of the pie” is interrelated—points have to be addressed concurrently due to how they have an effect on one another, from renewable gasoline infrastructure to technological readiness and capital value of recent fleets, amongst different issues. And first steps into an unsure future, the place nobody sector is absolutely in charge of potential outcomes, is inherently dangerous.

“Besides infrastructure limitations, we only have prototypes (of alternative HDVs) for fleet operator use, so the cost of procuring them is high, which means there isn’t demand for automakers to build manufacturing lines up to a scale that would make them economical to produce,” says Liang, describing only one step of a vicious cycle that’s troublesome to disrupt, particularly for business stakeholders making an attempt to be aggressive in a free market.

Quantifying a path to feasibility

“Folks in the industry know that some kind of energy transition needs to happen, but they may not necessarily know for certain what the most viable path forward is,” says Liang. Though there isn’t a singular avenue to zero emissions, the brand new mannequin gives a strategy to additional quantify and assess no less than one slice of pie to help decision-making.

Different MIT-led efforts aimed toward serving to business stakeholders navigate decarbonization embrace an interactive mapping instrument developed by Danika MacDonell, Influence Fellow on the MIT Local weather and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC); alongside Florian Allroggen, govt director of MITs Zero Influence Aviation Alliance; and undergraduate researchers Micah Borrero, Helena De Figueiredo Valente, and Brooke Bao.

The MCSC’s Geospatial Decision Support Tool helps strategic decision-making for fleet operators by permitting them to visualise regional freight move densities, prices, emissions, deliberate and out there infrastructure, and related rules and incentives by area.

Whereas present limitations reveal the necessity for joint problem-solving throughout sectors, the authors imagine that stakeholders are motivated and able to deal with local weather issues collectively. As soon as-competing companies already look like embracing a tradition shift towards collaboration, with the latest settlement between Common Motors and Hyundai to discover “future collaboration across key strategic areas,” together with clear power.

Liang believes that transitioning the transportation sector to zero emissions is only one a part of an “energy revolution” that can require all sectors to work collectively, as a result of “everything is connected. In order for the whole thing to make sense, we need to consider ourselves part of that pie, and the entire system needs to change,” says Liang. “You can’t make a revolution succeed by yourself.”

This story is republished courtesy of MIT Information (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a preferred web site that covers information about MIT analysis, innovation and educating.