Fluid Power on Capitol Hill

NFPA, CCEFP, and several industry supporters visited Capitol Hill on February 27-28, 2017 to promote the proposed Commercial Off-Road Vehicle R&D Program through the Vehicle Technology Office within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

This program is important to the fluid power industry because:

• The commercial off-road market consumes 8% of total transportation energy, which is larger than either marine or aviation.
• The commercial off-road vehicles in the U.S. consume 17.3 million gallons of fuel per year, containing 2.4 quads of energy and generating 180,000 tons of CO2.
• The commercial off-road vehicles market exceeds $100 billion and employs more than 250,000 people in the U.S.
• Energy efficiency and productivity innovations are key drivers for jobs, exports, and technological leadership in the global off-road vehicle market.
• There is currently no dedicated program in the federal government for pre-competitive research in this area. We are requesting $5 million for FY17 and $10 million for FY18 for pre-competitive R&D to improve the energy efficiency of fluid power systems for commercial off-road vehicles. Research would be conducted by teams of industry and university researchers selected through an open competitive grant process.

Potential technologies to achieve this level of energy savings include:

• Increased efficiency enabled by new architectures and more efficient fluid power components
• Systematic modeling tools to investigate new architectures, user interfaces, controls, and connectivity
• Tighter integration of fluid power systems with combustion engines
• Connected and automated off-road vehicles to improve efficiency and productivity
• The NFPA and CCEFP will help bring people together so that university and industry proposal teams can be formed. More information will be forthcoming.

Photo courtesy of Ron Cogswell