Stricter diesel emissions standards starting with 2007 models could add $5,000 to $6,000 to the price of a new medium duty engine and $7,000 to $10,000 to a big bore Class 8 engine,
according to Dee Kapur, president of International Truck and Engine’s truck group.
“We recognize that this is a pretty significant increase in pricing,” Kapur told trade media at a Tuesday teleconference, “so our focus has been to work to mitigate – to the extent possible – the financial impact to our customers.”
International will draw heavily on its experience as an integrated manufacturer as well as its Green Diesel Technology, which has been available on school buses and trucks since the early 2000s. Plans for International’s 6-cylinder “I-6” engines include exhaust gas recirculation (EGR), optimized combustion, increased injection pressure, and a diesel particulate filter (DPF) based on the Green Diesel program. Its V-8 products will follow basically the same recipe. The after-treatment system will also include pressure and temperature sensors that will monitor particulate burn-off or regeneration.
Company executives said they’re working closely with suppliers of big bore engines and all products for 2007 will use EGR and particulate filters with active regeneration. Kapur said they are not yet ready to disclose details of International’s own 12-liter engine, currently being developed with MAN. The engine is scheduled to go into production in late 2007.
International has trucks running in captive tests and some trucks are being tested by customers in a variety of applications. At this point the company doesn’t anticipate any significant impact on maintenance, other than routine maintenance of the particulate filters. Fuel economy is harder to peg since it depends largely on the application. For instance a heavily loaded tractor running in the southwest where ambient temperatures are high would see very little regeneration time and therefore very little degradation in fuel economy. But other applications create a lot more particulates to be burned off, and that burn-off process will decrease fuel economy.
Manufacturers are hoping to ease the sting of higher prices by keeping fuel economy, maintenance, reliability and other cost factors as close to pre-2007 levels as possible. As Kapur noted, the industry has also come together in support of an effort led by the American Trucking Associations to win an investment tax credit for the new engines. Two bills (HR 3301 and S1240) each propose a 5% Investment Tax Credit for Class 8 trucks purchased from January through December of 2007. The measure has strong support in Congress but is bucking a movement to reduce spending and curb tax breaks spurred by the high cost of recent hurricanes.