Heavy duty hybrids to go zero-emission in cities, says TNO

Heavy duty hybrid vehicles in future may need to switch to zero emissions when entering a city - and be competitive in their total cost of ownership. Speaking at this week’s ITS European Congress in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Steven Wilkins, senior research scientist at TNO, discussed the ORCA (optimised real-world cost-competitive modular hybrid architecture for heavy duty vehicles) project’s objectives of matching the total cost of ownership with efficiency. “Connected to that is downsizing the engine
June 5, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
Heavy duty hybrid vehicles in future may need to switch to zero emissions when entering a city - and be competitive in their total cost of ownership.


Speaking at this week’s ITS European Congress in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Steven Wilkins, senior research scientist at 7087 TNO, discussed the ORCA (optimised real-world cost-competitive modular hybrid architecture for heavy duty vehicles) project’s objectives of matching the total cost of ownership with efficiency.

“Connected to that is downsizing the engine. We very much want to increase the electric range of these types of vehicles much more significantly than at present,” he added.

Research group TNO is responsible for the overall technical coordination of ORCA, an initiative which seeks to design a greener and affordable hybrid drivetrain for heavy duty vehicles.

Wilkins posed the question of the type of ITS data that is needed for the vehicles to run to the audience at a session entitled Contribution of ITS to improve efficiency and reduce Heavy Duty Vehicle emissions.

“Within a city area, perhaps supported by a lot of charging infrastructure you may have the ability for the vehicles to be highly electric, and for longer distances we stay more with a more liquid fuel,” he continued. “But there is a whole class of vehicles that need to operate within the city centre but have the extended range of longer distances, so this mixed functionality becomes important for being able to predict ahead exactly what the vehicle is going to do.”

Related Content

  • March 28, 2018
    UK Police cars to trial hydrogen cars in zero emission project
    Cars from the UK's Metropollitan police are set to be among nearly 200 new hydrogen powered vehicles switching to zero emission miles following an £8.8m ($12.4m) project funded by the Department of Transport (DoT). It is designed with the intention of improving access to hydrogen fuelling stations across the country and increasing the number of hydrogen cars on its roads from this Summer. The scheme is run by a consortium led by Element Energy whose members also include ITM Power, Shell, Toyota and
    Read More
  • October 13, 2015
    Transport in the round
    The ITF’s Mary Crass tells Colin Sowman why future transport demands will require governments to overcome the silo effect of individual single-modal authorities. The only global multimodal transport policy organisation,” is how Mary Crass describes the International Transport Forum (ITF), which is housed at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As head of policy and summit preparation at the ITF she says: “All other organisations are either regional or have a modal focus, we cove
    Read More
  • April 9, 2014
    Global toll revenues $8.5bn while technology ‘battles’ continue
    ABI Research’s Dominique Bonte talks to Jason Barnes about trends in tolling and how a wider appreciation of technology options is sorely needed. Global Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) solution revenues will grow to $8.5bn by 2018, with ETC becoming a main source of funding for both Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and Vehicle-to-X (V2X) cooperative infrastructures, according to a new report from ABI Research (Chart 1). But, says the report’s author, ABI Research vice president and practice director Dom
    Read More
  • May 22, 2025
    ITS community 'must lead with conviction', says Eric Sampson
    ITS European Congress chief rapporteur urges 'fairer, safer and shared' mobility
    Read More

Highlighted Content