September 2008, Work Truck - Feature
FedEx Implements Green Fleet Initiative
By Joe Bohn
Whereas electric hybrids use an electric motor and a bank of batteries to assist the powertrain, hydraulic hybrids use pressurized hydraulic fluid.
The hydraulic hybrid development effort, while following that of electric hybrids, still lags considerably further behind.
FedEx is just now planning to put its first hydraulic hybrid into operation.
As part of a heavy-truck users group (CALSTART’s Hybrid Truck Users Forum), the company has also teamed with other major package delivery companies, including UPS and Purolator Corp., to help speed hybrid hydraulic development.
Meanwhile, the FedEx worldwide fleet of 172 commercial hybrid trucks, including the largest commercial hybrid-electric fleet in North America, has already logged more than 2 million miles of revenue service.
FedEx’s assorted group of hybrids, including four types of vehicles, has more than proven the technology’s reliability/dependability and tremendous environmental/fuel saving benefits: 42-percent better fuel economy and 30- and 96-percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and particulate pollution, respectively, over their conventional counterparts.
Cost the Key Stumbling Block
Expense is the only current drawback to popularizing the vehicles. Commercial hybrid trucks typically have cost about 75 percent more than conventional counterparts.
FedEx would like to see the premium reduced to 20-25 percent, similar to that for passenger models, Jackson says.
If commercial truck manufacturers could achieve that, FedEx Express VP of Global Vehicles John Formisano thinks the trucks would become overwhelming favorites with Class 4 and 5 fleet operators.
But the commercial truck market’s more limited size (compared to retail) has made manufacturers reluctant to take the initiative Toyota took in popularizing the Prius. Just getting the 172 hybrids produced in the timeframes FedEx sought was difficult, Jackson notes.
The company’s vehicle fleet includes about 30,000 Class 3-6 models. Although sizeable, the numbers haven’t been enough to drive full commercialization.
"When you’re looking at a fleet population of 30,000, with a vehicle life of more than 10 years, you’re only in the low thousands for what one could replace on a year-to-year basis," Jackson notes. "Manufacturers need a lot more volume on an annual basis to justify their tooling investments."
To help encourage production, Fed- Ex has refrained from making any proprietary technology claims for its vehicles and actively encouraged and assisted other fleet operators, including competitors, in stepping up their hybrid use.
The company has also gone to the U.S. Congress seeking fuel economy standards for medium- and heavy-duty fleet trucks — the only commercial fleet to do so. Such standards would, perhaps, be the most potent stimulus to expanding the market for commercial hybrids.
"We recognize that government support will give a major boost to this technology," Jackson says.