Speaking to the Australian trucking media in Darwin recently, Hino Australia President and CEO Richard Emery suggested that Hino’s success with the 300 Series could lead to a hybrid 700 Series.
“Diesel powertrains in trucks will remain the pre-eminent solution in the Australian trucking industry beyond 2030,” he said.
“We believe Hybrid Electric will remain the only high volume, lower-emission truck in Australia over the next decade.”
Pushed on whether we would see larger trucks like the 700 Series using the Hino hybrid powertrain, Emery said he’d love to see it.
However, he said it came down to resources in Japan: “Once again, we’re having to prioritise what’s important to us in terms of engineering resources in Japan. Obviously, we want 300 (Euro 6) done quickly, 500 (Euro 6) done quickly. The truth is, there is a priority list.”
But it seems likely that a hybrid 700 Series is not far down that list.
“Yes, it’s what we want to do,” Emery said. “We have customers who are interested in 700 Series Hybrid, but conventional diesel in Euro 6 form is a priority for us at the moment.”
Speaking at the same event, Hino’s Daniel Petrovski, Department Manager – Product Strategy, delved even further into the Hino trucks of the future.
“For bigger, heavier vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles would be the way of the future for that area because of the energy density of hydrogen fuel versus battery electric, and that energy density is something like 100 times more in a kilo of hydrogen than in a kilo of batteries. It’s a simple calculation. Payload is king with operators,” Petrovski said.
“BEV has a place in those short-haul operations where payload is not as critical. And hybrid electric can play right across that range.
“Diesel will be here for a long time, 2030 and beyond, (in) 2050 we’ll still have diesel trucks. Will they be assisted by hybrid? In most cases, yes. They’ll have some type of electrification; that’s our road map out to 2050.”
Petrovski said BEV makes sense in Japan where most of the 300 Series Dutro electric vans are doing around 50 kilometres per day.
“In fact, our parent company HML can’t get enough Dutros to satisfy the market,” he said.
“It also makes sense in Japan where they have a great electrical infrastructure. They have nuclear, and that’s a green solution for the BEVs, whereas we’re pumping coal electricity into our BEVs so there’s no environmental benefit in this market versus Japan.”
Obviously, if operators could get a prime mover with a hybrid powertrain like that in the 300 Series, there could be a big fuel saving.
Independent comparison tests have shown that in the 300 Series, fuel savings of better than 20 per cent are achievable with hybrid over standard diesel.
And who knows, with the merger of Daimler and Hino coming into effect on April 1 next year, we could see some of the big Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner trucks sporting hybrid powertrains.
It will be interesting to watch.