Freightliner LLC announced that it is continuing with its rigorous preparations for the three EPA '07-compliant engines it will launch early next year – the heavy-duty Detroit Diesel Series 60 and MBE 4000 and the medium-duty MBE 900.

The company has already begun the emissions certification process for the engines with the expectation of being fully certified by start of production in January.
With just a handful of months left until the new emissions standards take effect, Freightliner LLC is extremely prepared and looking forward to bringing these re-developed engines to the marketplace. The company has placed an enormous amount of effort into its EPA '07 program, including: expected accumulation of nearly 25 million miles of lab and reliability growth testing across the Detroit Diesel Series 60, MBE 4000 and MBE 900 engines; a robust Customer Demonstration Program to gauge how the products will perform for the end user; extensive training of the service network; and readily available service parts at service network locations all over North America.
"We are looking forward to start of production for these engines and have the testing, training and parts availability in place to fully support our Series 60, MBE 4000 and MBE 900 engines," said Tim Tindall, program director for EPA '07 for Detroit Diesel. "We have production-ready engines being shipped to Freightliner Truck Plants for final system verification and should have emissions certification completed according to our plans.
"We have been extremely encouraged by the fuel economy performance of the test vehicles and customer demonstration vehicles," Tindall continued. "All vehicles are using ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and the vehicles are demonstrating fuel consumption levels very close to the current vehicles. In controlled testing, fuel consumption of the 2007 vehicle is within one percent of the 2006 vehicle.
"We are running with full production intent hardware, software and calibration and for the Series 60 engine alone, we have accumulated 11 million miles and are targeting 14 million miles by the time the first engine comes off the assembly line in January," Tindall explained.
"We've received highly positive feedback through our Customer Demonstration Program. We're excited about getting these engines into the chassis of various Freightliner trucks come next January and seeing our best launch ever come to fruition."