Hyllion ERX - A Natural Gas Hybrid Electric Semi
 

This is Hyliion's new hybrid system. It is an electric truck with a natural gas powered generator to charge the battery. It can run EV only for 25 miles to enter EV only areas in cities and cruise 1,300 mile on a tank.

This is a great idea for a realistic way to transition long-haul trucking to alternative fuels. Natural gas stations already exist and NG trucks have very low emissions. It is likely actually simpler than a modern diesel truck with all the emission controls and little fuel economy tweeks.

https://www.hyliion.com/erx-page/#/performance

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Sn4hI7CjcEY/maxresdefault.jpg

Amazing it can hold enough CNG to run 1300 miles working a load. Or can it?

Using 6mpg, you need 216 gallons of diesel so perhaps 1000 gallon high pressure gas. The tanks shown look almost big enough for1/2 that, one on each side.

The CNG transit vans I drove had a 50 gallon tank where the gasoline tank was but I could only get maybe 60 miles out of it before refill. Some days I refilled 3 times.

Do you remember how many GGEs it could hold?

It has a side tank on each side and a giant cabinet tank behind the cab.

Also as a hybrid it should be more efficient than CNG converted diesel.

EDIT: I believe the 1300 mile range is for liquid natural gas which is about 4x denser than compressed natural gas.

The outfit I worked for was hugely non technical, so, unfortunately no. They had issues scheduling how far I could run before refueling even after I gave them a tank range.

Liquid gas is comparable to gasoline for BTU content, so if that's the case 1300 miles is much easier.

I wonder what happened to that one guy who was on a mission to improve MPGs on a huge fleet? He kept going on and on about HHO, insisting that testing proved a benefit.

Some more detail now that I have access to a computer:

Agility LNG side tanks are up to 160 DGE each
Agility CNG side tanks are up to 60 DGE each
Agility CNG Cabinet tanks are up to 175 DGE

What is a DGE? Distance per Gallon Equivalent?

Diesel gallon equivalent

Right now diesel trucks can run natural gas fumigation straight into the intake.
LNG sounds expensive.
These things aren't going anywhere till the diesel trucks can fill up with CNG anywhere they need to.
You know what that means, more natural gas pipe lines.

CNG and LNG will take off when large fleets decide it is cheaper to run than diesel. Emission regulations are helping to speed that transition as NG trucks burn clean enough to avoid urea injection and particulate filters. They are as simple as pre-emission diesels.

UPS recently announced they are adding an additional 6000 CNG vehicles between 2020 and 2022. The don't give the breakdown between medium duty and heavy duty. UPS runs a mixed fleet of 3800 CNG vehicles today with 31 private fueling stations.

They also run a fleet of 1300 LNG Class 8 tractors and operate 15 LNG fueling stations.


Today there are 1000 public CNG and 90 LNG fueling stations with multiple coast to coast routes. There are also plenty of NG pipelines to add more and a steady supply of cheap gas from fracking. It is way simpler to add to the natural gas infrastructure than to try to start over with hydrogen or HD electric charging stations (which are impractical anyway)

Cng only needs a high pressure pump, storage tank and metering system. We ran our system off city mains that existed. Found out that the utilities added compressed air to the gas in winter to increase flow.

It already is cheaper than diesel. Last time I was at a CNG station it was $1.41 cents for one gallon of diesel equivalent of natural gas.
LNG likely won't be cheaper as its so expensive to cool it to the temperature where it becomes a liquid. Compressing it is very cheap and simple by comparison.
CNG can be provided by the company if they have natural gas service and are willing to buy a CNG system since 1 million BTUs only costs around $3. That's the energy of about 7 gallons of diesel.

I wouldn't hold my breath for LNG due to the higher cost of processing and its more dangerous storage. CNG on the other hand only needs to become more easily available. In my hometown Porto Alegre it's still widely used by taxi drivers even though the price skyrocketted recently, while in smaller cities with fewer stations providing CNG refuelling even commercial operators are not using it anymore. Not to mention Bolivia where imports of vehicles with Diesel engines below 4-litre were forbidden in 2004 or 2005 initially could be seen as a step toward a transition to CNG but such plan failed because CNG stations were not fairly distributed on a nationwide basis, or in Venezuela where CNG also failed as a desperate attempt to release more gasoline and Diesel fuel for export at higher prices than the heavily subsidized domestic market.


Urea injection is a PITA, and so are the particulate filters. Considering smaller trucks and vans for which naturally-aspirated gassers are still favored in the USA, Mexico and Canada, a transition to CNG might be quite smooth.


Even resorting to biomethane, which could not only provide a better destination to organic waste in general but also decrease the release of raw methane into the atmosphere and serve as a way to add value to byproducts of farming such as livestock manure, makes more sense than hydrogen. A switch to full electrification of motoring is quite a pipedream as much as hydrogen.

There is much more to cost than just fuel cost. There is the extra cost of the engine, the tanks, training your maintenance workers, stocking extra parts, different oils, etc. Then there is the resale value. Most large fleets only keep their trucks for 3-5 years.

The problem with CNG is range. It works fine for local delivery but the range is a bit short for long-haul. Agility's largest CNG side tank is only 60 DGE. You can add a cabinet tank that holds 175 DGE but that makes for a long truck on a sleeper. Most CNG trucks are daycabs running set routes.

Resale value seems to be more critical, but since most of those dedicated-CNG engines fitted to heavy commercial vehicles (including buses) still share some components with their Diesel counterparts it might remain cost-effective for some operators.

That sounds like a good place to start.

I did a little more poking around last night and found a pretty good 2020 report by San Bernardino on 202 natural gas trucks purchased by Ryder leasing.

https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/2020public...0-2020-122.pdf

The upcharge for a CNG truck is about $50,000. That is a big upfront cost to make back in fuel savings though the savings are significant:

CNG trucks are also signifigantly heavier than diesel trucks with similar range. From Transport Topics:

10 years ago yes. In the near future I expect to see more electric trucks doing local delivery.

That's one reason why I consider it more viable to use CNG on urban transit buses than in heavy trucks. Garbage trucks might be a good case for CNG as long as they can resort to biomethane extracted from the landfills.

Garbage trucks should be battery powered by now. Short distances, high torque needed, constant starts/stops. Absolutely perfect job for a battery/electric drivetrain.

But almost all municipalities want to buy the cheapest price garbage truck they can get, since it's just a garbage truck. No one cares if the garbage trucks are nice.

Particulate filters yes, urea injection no. Excess air is mandatory at low load for compression ignition, making the urea injection necessary.

Most of the munis I am associated with subcontract to Waste Management or one of their affiliates which are not noted for their concerns about anything but profit

Natural gas avoids both, even if a dedicated-CNG engine would rely on direct injection.

Dedicated CNG engines like the Cummins L9N are spark ignition.

https://freightlinerads.azureedge.ne...2019-05-31.pdf

Now that Scania is partnering with Cummins, it would be interesting if they tried ethanol in a spark-ignited engine initially developed for CNG. Might work better than the failed compression-ignition ethanol engines which required an ignition improver to be blended into the ethanol, plus it could allow a much useful limp-home mode once CNG is depleted. This could eventually be a good option for agribusiness in Brazil.