Cummins Inc. announced the expansion of its powertrain platforms, leveraging a range of lower carbon fuel types. As the industry’s first unified, fuel-agnostic engines, these platforms will use engine blocks and core components that share common architectures. They will also be optimized for different low-carbon fuel types.
“Getting to zero is not a light-switch event,” says Srikanth Padmanabhan, president, Cummins Engine Business. “Carbon emissions that we put into the atmosphere today will have a lasting impact. This means anything we can do to start reducing the carbon footprint today is a win for the planet. We need to take action now. Having a variety of lower carbon options is particularly important considering the variation in duty cycles and operating environments across the many markets we serve. There is no single solution or ‘magic bullet’ that will work for all application types or all end users.”
PARTS COMMONALITY
These new fuel-agnostic engine platforms will feature a series of engine versions derived from a common base engine. Therefore, they have a high degree of parts commonality. Below the head gasket of each engine will largely have similar components; above the head gasket will have different components for different fuel types. Each engine version will operate using a different, single fuel.
Cummins will apply this design approach across its B, L, and X-Series engine portfolios. This approach will allow these engines to be available for diesel, natural gas, and hydrogen.
“This is a new way of designing and developing lower emission internal combustion powertrains that meet the unique needs of the transportation industry while leveraging the benefits of a common product architecture and footprint where possible,” says Jonathon White, vice president of engineering, Engine Business. “This unique technology approach will allow end users to more seamlessly pick the right powertrain for their application with the lowest CO2 impact.”
Additionally, parts commonality offers increased benefits for truck OEMs and end users, including similar engine footprints, diagnoses, and service intervals. As a result, OEMs can more easily integrate a variety of fuel types across the same truck chassis. It also means there will be minimal costs to train technicians and re-tool service locations. As a result, end users will see a lower total cost of ownership.
RELIABLE & DURABLE
Further, Cummins designed these fuel-agnostic platforms from learnings extracted from millions of diesel and natural gas engines manufactured and currently in-use. Today’s technology allows Cummins to extract insights specific to different engine duty cycles to design reliable fuel-agnostic platforms.
“Our customers can be confident in Cummins’ unmatched testing and evaluation process ensuring high-performance products,” White says. “No matter what type of work a fleet does, we’ll have an engine powered by lower carbon fuels with diesel-like performance to get the job done.”
DESTINATION ZERO
These new products are an important element of Cummins’ strategy to go further faster, to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) and air quality impacts of its products, and reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in a way that serves all stakeholders in a sustainable way for Cummins’ business. This commitment requires changes to Cummins’ products and the energy sources that power them.
Two of the company’s environmental sustainability goals for 2030 goals include: reducing scope 3 absolute lifetime greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from newly sold products by 25%; and partnering with customers to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions from products in the field by 55 million metric tons.
“Cummins is innovating at every level of the company to find new ways of working that use fewer of the world’s resources and the Engine Business is at the center of this exciting innovation,” Padmanabhan says. “We know that our planet cannot wait for the perfect solution to happen. Instead, our approach must be a combined effort of using zero emissions power where it’s available and using cleaner power where it is not. The planet cannot afford for us to hit pause in the meantime.”
Find out more, visit www.cummins.com.
