There’s been a subtle change in the language being used by Hino when it comes to it’s hybrid trucks. Where once they simple called them hybrids, the company has now labelled them electric hybrids.
It is a subtle change that could be viewed as either a way of papering over the fact that Hino does not have a pure battery electric of its own yet, nor does it seem likely it will have one in the next few years, or that it is merely emphasising the efficiency of an boost of an electric/diesel hybrid combination.
Hino’s hybrid trucks have been around for quite some time now The 300 Series Hino Hybrid has been operating in Australia for the past 15 years. It’s and it’s fair to say that the technology has not really set the sales charts alight. That can probably be sheeted home to a number of things, including a lack of understanding in the marketplace, a scepticism of the technology by potential buyers and perhaps the fact that until recently it’s been easier to sell a diesel than a hybrid truck. So far in 2023 Hino has sold around 120 hybrid models in Australia to the end of June, according to figures we have seen, which means they account for just a shade over 3.7 per cent of the brand’s total sales in Australia, so as we say buyers are hardly knocking the doors down to add hybrids to their fleets. However even though in recent times, the rapid increase in interest in electric drivelines in trucks and a growing pressure on large corporations to reduce emissions has seen a clamour to get onboard a zero emission or at least a low emission future, battery electric sales haven’t really taken off yet either. In June according to TIC’s alternative fuel truck sales figures Hino sold 49 Hybrids for the month or around 40 per cent of its 120 hybrid sales for the year to date, so something is starting to move. The threat for Hino’s hybrid electric model however could be the oncoming rush of reasonably priced battery electric trucks with the arrival of such as things as Isuzu’s own battery electric N Series sometime in the next 18 months, or more immediately trucks from battery electric newcomers, like Foton Mobility. The newly arrive Chinese truck and bus maker registered 21 electric trucks in June to be the best selling pure battery electric brand with worked that it has a lot more orders in the bank for months ahead
So with no pure battery electric model on the horizon Hino is banking on its hybrid models to continue to provide it with a entrant in the ‘electric’ truck market delivering fuel savings and emissions reductions.
Part of Hino’s push was seen in the chance to do a test drive in a Hino 300 Series Hybrid 616 accompanied by a similar specced model on a run south from the company’s Aussie HQ in the southern Sydney suburb of Woolooware to the steel city of Wollongong and back. The run roughly approximated a normal workday for a truck like this, around 250km and a mix of suburban, motorway and rural road running and plenty of stop start driving.
Alongside us in the cab of the Hino Hybrid was the company’s product strategy and planning guru. Daniel Petrovski who is a strong advocate for the Hybrid technology in trucks and foreshadowed a bunch of other Hino variants earmarked for potential sales in Australia.
Petrovski admits that hybrid sales have not been what they should have been in Australia and says that they have targeted to increase sales from the 50 odd hybrids they have been selling per year in recent times, to 300 this year, which they appear to be on track to achieve.
“I think we haven’t sold it that well and there needs to be some basic education about the benefits of hybrid and how to get the best out of them,” Petrovski mentioned.
Petrovski and Hino point to a potential fuel saving of around 20 per cent for a hybrid over a comparable conventional diesel only truck, and to give an indication we were tailed throughout our drive by a diesel powered Hino 617 Trade pack, to enable us to have a pretty accurate comparison of fuel consumption between the two.
Petrovski was also selling the hybrid concept on the basis of the enormous amount of infrastructure that will be needed to enable larger fleets of electric vehicles to be charged each day, pointing out that the hybrid only requires the normal fuel station network already in place. However there also seems to be a lot of work going on behind the scenes to deliver that electrical and charging infrastructure to cope with an electric vehicle fleet which will not arrive in one burst but rather over many years of growth, so time will tell which train of thought is correct.
We climbed aboard the 616 Hybrid at Hino HQ for the trip south and like any hybrid machine the little Hino glided away from start pretty quietly and without any fuss or bother. Subtly and very seamlessly the diesel engine kicks in after a short time, blending with the electric motor that is integrated into the drive line, and which acts as a generator when decelerating or running downhill. This puts charge back into the hybrid’s battery to ensure plenty of charge when accelerating or climbing supplementing the diesel’s drive.
Driving through the traffic of the Sutherland Shire in the mid-morning, following a thorough briefing on the hybrid concept showed that the truck drives pretty much like a full diesel powered one. The driveline of the hybrid runs through a six-speed AM/T so it is pretty much like driving a conventional diesel and is a benefit for operators struggling to attract skilled truck drivers.
Petrovski added to this with the fact that a hybrid reduces the wear on the clutch, even with an AM/T, because with the electric motor driving the initial acceleration of the truck from standstill, the transmission is being turned before the clutch is even engaged.
“The electric motor turn the transmission before the clutch is engaged, so there isn’t as much clutch wear because the electric motor starts to move the truck along before the clutch engages, so that means less friction and less wear, “ Petrovski explained.
The AMT also allows the driver to shift manually if needed or simply keep it in drive and allow the transmission’s electronic brain to do the work for you and it does that reasonably efficiently.
Of course as a hybrid, when the truck pulls up at a set of traffic lights the diesel engine will stop and when the lights turn green the initial start-up is again on the electric motor before the diesel comes to life after the initial hard work is done by the electric motor. This is where some significant fuel usage benefits are achieved both at ide and in that high burn rate time for a diesel overcoming the inertia of the truck when accelerating.
Far from being difficult or complex to drive the hybrid is very easy to pilot hosing down at least one fear that truck operators have expressed to us about adopting the technology.
The other resistance we have been made aware of is what savings can be gained from a hybrid and how they compare with the added purchase price for one?
After a four or so hour’s behind the wheel of the Hybrid on the run to the ‘Gong and back the truck used about 16.5 litres of diesel compared with about 21.2 litres of diesel used in the Hino 617 diesel that tailed us on the drive So that meant that the hybrid used about 4.7 litres less fuel than the diesel only model, or about $9 in fuel costs. Potentially the hybrid or the diesel could travel and work double that distance in a full working day. Perhaps this would deliver a dollar saving of perhaps $19 or $20 per day. That then translates to a saving of say around $6200 a year based on a 52 week /five day a week work regime. Of course kilometres and the terrain covered would make a difference in these figures, but saving $6000 odd a year is a reasonable amount and not to be sneezed at. However while that might satisfy those seeking to reduce emissions and to be better environmentally it doesn’t factor in the added purchase price of the hybrid over a similar spec conventional truck. In the murky realm of truck pricing it is at times difficult to get an exact price on specific trucks and certainly unlike cars, truck makers don’t generally publish an official price list. As far as we can see, a Hybrid Hino like the one we tested would cost about $66000 for a cab chassis. Compared to an equivalent conventional diesel at say around $48000 that means that the payback on the added purchase price given fuel savings would be about three years. That of course doesn’t factor in the claimed reduction in maintenance and wear for the hybrid.
Petrovski also emphasised that the less fuel used, whatever that amount might be, means less emissions and that with the hybrid’s ICE powerplant being a Euro 6 standard it means that the emissions are even less than earlier model diesels.
Hino product planning boss point to the fact that it can also be viewed in another light, considering it instead from an efficiency point of view and in particular just getting more kilometres out of each litre of diesel.
He also mounts the case in favour of the hybrid over a battery electric truck saying that the run that we tested the hybrid on would not be well suited to an electric truck, particularly given the hilly running, motorway conditions and range situations. The electric truck he says, would need a charge at some point on a run like that. That is something we would like to test in the future before quoting that as fact.
He also emphasised this country’s power grid has a high CO2 output and that the alternatives for companies wanting to charge without using brown energy, such as solar panels etc. he says present a difficulty. While we go along with Petrovski’s pitch to some extent, it must also be considered that he is basing his numbers on data available now or from the past. The reality is that our grid is rapidly changing in terms of green energy and it is envisaged that by the time battery electric trucks become common place then the situation will have changed dramatically in how power is generated in Australia.
“If you look at the figures for one kilowatt hour of power from the grid then you are talking about 0.656 kg of CO2,” Petrovski tells us.
He compares this to figures he quoted for what diesel puts out in terms of CO2 and that he says that an electric truck charged from the grid would emit three times the emissions that a diesel truck would.
He based this on the fact that one litre of diesel contains 10kW hours of energy and would emit 2.68kgs of CO2. That Petrovski says would mean that if you were to get the equivalent like for like emissions for 1kWh from the grid to 1kWh from diesel then you could divide that 2.68kg of CO2 by ten and that equals 0.268kg.
However the figure for grid power that was quoted by Petrovski appears to be a figure formulated in 2020. Figures from 2021 show that CO2 emissions have dropped to around 0.529kg for a kWh of power in Australia. That figure has changed further in the past two years, particularly given that in 2020 only 24 per cent of Australia’s power was generated by green power sources. That figure increased to 32.5 per cent of energy by green energy in 2021 and to 35.9 per cent last year. So given those dramatic increases in green energy that figure of CO2 produced in 2021 dropped further in 2022 and further again this year, so the CO2 advantage being spruiked for diesel is reducing all the time and will continue to decrease as more green power comes on line.
Which ever way you cut it a hybrid truck still has an ICE power plant that emits green house gases, albeit less than a pure diesel truck, and while a battery electric truck charged by the grid may currently mean more Co2 emitted, that will drop below the diesel figure sometime in the next few years.
That’s not to say that the hybrid concept is wrong or bad, far from it. It’s just that it is at best a bridge to a totally zero emission future for trucks that will come quicker than many believe. And herein lies our belief that Hino as part of the Toyota empire might skip the whole battery electric power train and use the hybrid as a bridge to Toyota’s clear favourite option, hydrogen fuel cell technology.
Toyota is one of the world leaders in hydrogen technology, both in fuel cells and in combustion engines, but has virtually no really high volume pure battery electric vehicles, which has led some pundits to prophesise that Toyota and by extension Hino are aiming at a H2 future not a BEV one.
While Petrovski did not necessarily totally confirm this theory, he did say that hydrogen will play a major role in Hino’s zero emission vehicle future. Even then he believes
Petrovski also pointed to issues that he believes would weigh against battery electric in terms of particular applications and industries and says that efficient hybrids would need to be used well after electric and hydrogen takes over in city and on highway operations.
“Battery electric will struggle in rural fire services, can you imagine a battery EV fire truck in the bushfires we had back in 2019, the power grid was down across a huge amount of rural Australia, so recharging would have been impossible, there wqs no electricity available,” Petrovski said.
“There’s also practical and vocational decisions to be made over hybrid versus battery electric in applications that involve off-road exploring or remote recoveries, mining and exploration which would be beyond a BEV’s capabilities,” he said
“You might be able to use hydrogen in some of those applications, but remote filling with hydrogen will be difficult and even though they will have a huge range you’ll still need to fill remotely,” he added.
T&TA doesn’t necessarily agree with Petrovski on this one and indicators we have been made aware of is that hydrogen will be made available in remote areas because the large mining and ag corps will need to have it to satisfy their zero emission obligations
The 616 Hybrid we drove to Wollongong and back was powered by Hino’s N04C-WR engine which with the help of its electric motor coupled to the diesel delivers 470Nm of torque, which is the critical figure, along with 110 kW of power. That was more than ample and the hybrid galloped along nicely, whether in traffic, hillclimbing or on the motorway.
Fuel economy to quote exact figures showed …….
Hino’s general claim is that a hybrid model will generally deliver a 20 per cent fuel saving over a totally diesel powered truck. However, with the modest Sutherland-Wollongong run multiplied to 69,000km per annum, fuel savings start to add up, especially when the diesel is anticipated to use 11,000 litres per year compared to the hybrid’s 8,500.
That doesn’t take into account service, maintenance and the total cost of ownership. While the hybrid is around $16,000 more expensive than the diesel, Petrovski says vehicle buyers will get that difference back in just three years. His figures show a diesel costing $2028 to run each month, while a hybrid’s costs are $1766. That includes lower maintenance costs and lower brake change intervals, not to mention the half tonne of CO2 savings each month.
Petrovski believes most customers opt for a lease arrangement, while buyers will keep the truck for between seven to 10 years.
With around 700 Hino hybrids currently on the road in Australia, and another 300 on order, Petrovski says the hybrid has hit a sweet spot for the manufacturer and will be a massive advantage over the next five to 10 years, even more so as there is little or no competition in the hybrid market.
“We’ve been trying to give the customers what they want, a vehicle that cuts their emissions and cuts their operating costs.
“We can offer cost reduction, environmental improvements and operational benefits for fleets,” Petrovski says. “This is our blue sky, blue ocean area. It really is a unique time for us.”
