I don't assume MACK would contact me if they did have a hybrid, as I'm not their customer base (I doubt many of us are), but what about all the freighter trucks moving crates back and forth across the US every day - where's the hybrid for those?

A California law had to be made to prevent truckers from sleeping a full night with the engine idling to keep them warm - amazingly wasteful considering that's one massive engine spewing diesel's worse exhaust out the stacks. A scenario like that begs for a hybrid - leave it on if you need the heat, it will only use the fuel it absolutely needs. Obviously a hybrid would have numerous other benefits, but this general practice screams for a hybrid.

And what about freight ships? Will we ever regulate those? It's notable that the smog problem of Los Angeles centers around the ports where large, unregulated polluting ships bring in what Americans consume from overseas. Tesla proposes to solve LA smog as depicted here:
http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/foreign_oil.php

But once that's solved, how will that pie chart appear? I wonder if those ships count as "industry" or "transportation" for the purposes of that statistic.

Anyway - is anything at all being done about the efficiency of how our freight gets around? Or are we hybrid owners all pitching in while shipping companies dodge the question?

Prius 2006, bought September 14:

I believe there has been Federal law for years banning engine idling over 5 minutes. I know for sure that Massachusetts law is 5 minutes max.

As for big truck hybrids, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon as the motor size required to push an 80,000 pound (legal limit for an 18 wheeler) truck and the batteries that would be required would probably be prohibitive. As for trucks idling all night for heat and a/c, that could be avoided in many cases like truck stops by having electric service at the parking area. Wouldn't do much for all the trucks parking by the side of the road though. In the cold weather the truckers don't like shutting down from fear the diesel won't start back up.

I'd bet that a good portion of the pollution around a big port is more from all the trucks hostling container trailers around. Add to that all the locomotives with their diesel fumes. Shipping, despite the pollution created is one of the most efficient means of moving product - at least in fuel burned per ton-mile of product moved. Railroads are way up there too.

Individually our contribution isn't much but as hybrids catch on more, the savings in gas and pollution will definitely make an impace. IMO anyway.

I don't know that hybrid technology is ready for long haul trucks.

One of the uses of hybrids has been in buses. The city of Elk Grove has serveral hybrid buses that work great on local routes in town. But they couldn't maintain enough electric power on the freeway to even keep the AC running when they used them for routes into Sacramento. Lot of fuming passengers when it was 110 in July.

Trucks don't need that much power to move heavy loads on level highways, but I think they will slow to a crawl on grades with the smaller engines needed to get the gains of hybriding. Going over the Sierras or passes like the Grapevine in southern CA would require a lot of electric boost, that woudl require a lot of battery. It just starts getting really expensive. But like buses, local delivery trucks (the bobtails that bring your paper clips for OfficeMax and others) would be great platforms for diesel hybrids.

Depends on the speed. At 40 or 50 they don't need much but the horses required increases exponentially due to air resistance. Lot's of drag on those big trucks. That is one of the reasons trains are so efficient (after the low rolling coefficient of steel-on-steel). A train has many cars behind the loco while a truck only has one or two trailers. A train is kinda like a long line of trucks drafting each other.

Thanks for the post nitram, that's pretty interesting. I didn't know shipping (via the seas) was so efficient.

As for large trucks and the ability to hybridize them... that seems strange to me that it wouldn't be possible. Maybe I'm being naive but couldn't the Hybrid Synergy Drive just be scaled up? Toyota's specifically stated that they can easily envision scaling it upwards, it's downwards that would be difficult. Is the problem simply "Toyota needs to build it for it to be any good?"

On the topic of buses, there are crap dual-mode (never at the same time) buses in Boston that need a tech to come over and switch modes manually in the middle of every trip. The buses are on the Silver Line, it takes you to the Airport. If ever there was a use for hybrid technology... . Those buses run on overhead electric half the way then diesel the other half. A scaled up HSD could run seamlessly across both halves and maybe even get amazing mileage for the diesel half. It's too bad. My memory's faint on this one but it may have actually been GM that built those crappy buses in Boston.

Prius 2006, bought September 14:

I would expect that the hp required to accelerate a big truck in reasonable time is > 5 times the hp required to move the truck on a flat incline at 60 miles per hour.
Moving up a 4% grade would also require about 5 times the hp. These conditions make a series hybrid highly desirable for a truck - lower drivetrain losses, a much more efficient engine of approx. 20-25% of the normal size, a battery pack that would be an insignificant expense, compared to the huge fuel savings, and pollution, greenhouse gas savings. A gas turbine or a brayton cycle engine running at 50% efficiency would be desireable for this application. Don't worry about electric motors, in industry huge electric motors are commonly used and electric drive is the standard for big mobile equipment like big mine haulage trucks and huge draglines & hoes. It is simply a problem of getting these braindead truck companies off of their butts and start designing modern equipment - also a battery problem, since Chevron refuses to sell the very effective NiMH batteries in large sizes for vehicle applications, you are stuck with the need for the very immature Li-Ion battery technology.

For example of big vehicles that are electric drive / series hybrid, check out this Chinese company:
http://www.fevehicle.com/services.html
They have a series hybrid 50 passenger bus, for which they are claiming 38 mpg, and they have a 70 passenger bus which goes 85 miles on battery alone - even though they are using old technology Lead-Acid batteries.
Another example of American Knowhow going down the tubes because of corrupt corporate arseholes & slimey politicians, much more interested in filling their own pockets than doing any good for the country or the environment.

Actually, trucking companies like pulling triple trailers because it uses very little extra fuel. My old roommate was a UPS manager and used to joke that they would pull mile long trains of trailers if the law would allow it. Drivers don't like triple trailers because they are harder to drive. But they are efficient.

30 years ago, large trucks were capable of pulling their loads at highway speeds with less horsepower than many have today. Of course they needed 16 and 20 speed transmissions to get the job done, and crawled under high load on grades back then. Now many are automatics with fewer than 10 speeds and they can really haul ***.

That was my point - the additional power required to pull two or three trailers isn't double or triple since most of the power is to overcome wind resistance and that is taken care of by the cab. Same reason you get better gas mileage when tailgating (oops, I mean drafting) a big truck.

Triple trailers aren't much harder to drive than a single....as long as you only have to go straight forward and NEVER have to back up.

If I am not mistaken, the operator of the bus makes the switchover from diesel to catenary power but I have only been on the Silver Line once. I'm not a big fan of so-called Bus Rapid Transit since it is a threat to my livelihood.

I don't know who made the buses but one of the problems any public agency faces in a procurement such as that is the requirement to give the low bidder the contract. Need another example? Do a search on Breda Type 8 Green Line cars..... .

I agree though, the Silver Line would have been perfect for hybrid vehicles if the technology was ready.

Well, that's only part of it. They're a bit harder to drive but they're MUCH harder to get a license for!
http://www.marylandmva.com/DriverSer...censeclass.htm
These regulations vary a little state by state, but not much - to drive a single trailer truck you typically need to get just one class of license above that of a normal car. To get a triple trailer license you need both a Class A, and a T endorsement - you're getting the hardest license to obtain before HAZMAT, that is, the one that lets you drive a tank! I know a couple guys who drive triple trailers and they said the last part of the test asks you to parallel park a triple trailer! Amount of give space between the 2 barriers varies state to state but I've heard it gets as low as 3 feet - can you imagine? I asked, "Do you use mirrors... can you...?" He said, "At that point you're just using The Force."

evone, Thanks for chiming in. I can't see power limitations of electric as being the problem with tractor-trailers - not only are there many trains hauling amazing loads on electric engines, but every US aircraft carrier on the seas runs on just 4, massive electric engines. REALLY massive. You're not going to put an aircraft carrier in a truck, but the point is electric can provide a lot of power.

Maybe Toyota or Honda, or maybe even GM if the Vue is as good as I've been hearing lately, need to just apply their technology to these problems as well. Toyota's got enough business on their hands but it would do Honda and GM well to do just that.

It's actually sort of funny that I mentioned sea transport as causing the smog - UCS just put out a petition about just that:
http://ucsaction.org/campaign/9_20_0...ort_Pollution/

If you live in California and would like to see smog reduced in LA, sign it!

Prius 2006, bought September 14: