Kings of the road go green
by Phil McKenna
from New Scientist, Vol. 203, Issue 2721
"A concept vehicle called the Innovation Truck unveiled in April by Daimler Trucks North America is designed to show what is possible by tweaking a vehicle's aerodynamics. In wind tunnel tests it used 3 per cent less fuel than an unmodified truck - which rolled out across the entire US truck fleet would save about 4.3 billion litres of fuel annually. This translates into an annual cut in CO2 emissions of over 11 million tonnes.
More ambitious plans are afoot. Engineers and industry leaders at an RMI conference on freight-vehicle efficiency in April concluded that readily available and inexpensive technologies could boost efficiency by up to 23 per cent, and even doubling or tripling fuel efficiency might be within reach."