U.S. trucks lining up behind upcoming tech in bid to save on fuel
System pairing tractor-trailers aims to increase efficiency and safety on the road
If you look to the next lane and see two 18-wheelers roar past at 100 kilometres per hour with just three metres between them on your next trip south of the border, you’ll probably think they are dangerously close.
In this high-tech age, that may no longer be true. In fact, it might be just the opposite and it might even end up saving you money.
Awave of new technology intended to make trucks safer — using radar, cameras and reflective light scanning — is sweeping the industry. By next year, much of it may be combined to put pairs of trucks on the road at a distance that before would not have been possible or safe.
One reason this matters to people who don’t drive tractor-trailers is the annual crash-death numbers from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Of the 4,317 people who died in crashes involving large trucks last year, 72 per cent weren’t in trucks, but rather passenger cars. An additional 11 per cent were pedestrians, bicyclists, roadway workers or police officers, according to statistics released this month.
The pairing of tractor-trailers at a distance of nine to 15 metres is called platooning. Here’s why it’s significant — and how it might save you money.
Fans of bike racing and Formula One racing are acquainted with what it means to get into someone else’s slipstream. Whether in spandex or F1 fire-retardant suits, racers know they can save energy or fuel by tucking close behind another rider or race car. Truckers know that, too.
Trucking companies spent about $90 billion (U.S.) on diesel fuel last year. Firms spend the most paying drivers, but diesel often is the second-biggest expense, sometimes 20 per cent of operating costs.
A truck tucked into the slipstream of a another can save 10 per cent on fuel. But the truck in front also will burn about 5 per cent less fuel. Why? Part of the drag on a truck is caused by turbulent air that tumbles off the top and sides of the trailer. When two trucks pair up closely, the air flows more smoothly from the first to the second, reducing that turbulence.
It’s fuel savings for both drivers. Yes, drivers; self-driving trucks are said to be coming, but for now the prospect of 36,000-kg vehicles hurtling down the highway on their own is somewhere over the horizon.
“The world of automated vehicles still will have a key role for the drivers,” Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, said at a recent U.S. Senate hearing. “We think drivers are still going to be in the seat.” But the role of the driver will evolve. “I believe drivers will become more like airline pilots,” said Troy Clarke, chief executive of the truck manufacturer Navistar, “even more trained and skilled than they are today.”
Safety advocates, however, have several concerns about platooning trucks, said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association.
“The chief safety concern for passenger vehicles is how other drivers will react to platoons,” Adkins said. “How fast should platoons be permitted to travel? Will long platoons block exit lanes that were not designed for such circumstances? Can we limit platoons to only the right lane, rather than blocking multiple lanes of traffic?”
Adkins adds, “The good news is that the necessary research is being conducted.”
Two big trucking companies, Navistar and Daimler, are preparing to put platooning trucks on the road, but an upstart California firm called Peloton (named after the bike-racing practice of utilizing the slipstream) says it may have paired trucks on the road next year.
Peloton partnered this year with Omnitracs, a trucking fleet management company. Although trucks from the same company could pair up on the highway on their own, Omnitracs can help match any two trucks heading in the same direction.
Peloton says that nine U.S. states allow platooning and that 29 others have laws that generally require vehicles to keep a “reasonable and prudent” distance between them without specifying an exact distance. Here’s how platooning works: Peloton plans to operate a central clearing house that communicates through a cellular connection with trucks whose companies have subscribed to its service. Once two trucks are paired, the interaction between the trucks is co-ordinated over the 5.9 GHz dedicated shortrange communications spectrum.
“We’re sending information directly from the front truck to the rear truck, information like engine torque, vehicle speed, brake application,” said Josh Switkes, one of Peloton’s founders. “Whatever the front truck is doing, the rear truck is doing it instantly.”
Platooning relies on a system of technologies already being installed in trucks and many cars that includes GPS, cameras, advanced cruise control and radar-based collision avoidance. A camera from the front truck displays the road ahead to the driver of the second truck. The information flow is co-ordinated on board by a computer Switkes describes as “about the size of a laptop.”
The concept of data flying between trucks, from truck to base station and within each truck — all to make in- stantaneous decisions with lifeor-death implications — is daunting.
“The amount of data being moved about the truck is a lot higher,” said Alan Amici, chief technical officer at the global connectivity corporation TE. “For platooning, you need realtime control.”
The Peloton system links acceleration and braking directly to the engine controls, bypassing the driver when two trucks are paired, although both drivers continue to steer and can take full control.
“We can send data very rapidly between the two trucks,” Switkes said. “It’s all electronically integrated. The reaction is about 30 milliseconds, compared to a human taking 1 to 1.5 seconds to react, at a minimum.”
The Peloton control centre will determine when conditions are suited to pairing two trucks.
“In severe weather conditions, we can restrict platooning,” Switkes said. “We can adjust the following distance and other parameters remotely. If we lose the connection, we know we’ve lost it and immediately take action to slow down that rear truck.”
Although Switkes likes to emphasize the safety aspects of platooning — and trucking companies see that, too — firms will be lured to Peloton and competitors by fuel savings.
“Most of the fleets we talk to say they can platoon most of the time, because they drive almost entirely on the highway,” Switkes said. “If you have a fleet of 20,000 or 30,000 trucks, you’re talking millions of dollars from the fuel savings, not even taking into account the safety benefits, and that’s why we have some big fleets excited about platooning.”