Toyota’s Next (Really) Big Thing in Hybrids for the U.S.: Diesel/Electric Hino Commercial Trucks ( hino electric )

 hino electric 

Starting this December, Toyota’s business truck emblem, Hino, will provide a pair of class 4 and class five cab-over-engine vehicles powered with the aid of diesel-electric powered hybrid powertrains in the U.S. These mark the first such industrial applications in the States, and with aero-tuned cabs atop their beefy chassis, the Hino hybrids will offer the principles for a selection of functions inclusive of urban transport trucks, dump vans, stake beds, and bucket-raise trucks. It’s unlikely very many will wind up as chrome-drenched and leather-covered glamour rigs, so the Cadillac Escalade hybrid will still reign best as the selection for individuals who need to haul passengers and now not goods.

With GVW rankings of 14,500 kilos for the mild-duty 155h and 19,500 pounds for the sumo-grade (medium-obligation) 195h, the hybrid vehicles combine Hino’s 5.Zero-liter faster-diesel four-cylinder engine—it makes 210 hp and 440 lb-toes of torque—with a unmarried electric powered motor contributing some other 48 hp and 250 lb-ft. The motor is sandwiched between the flywheel and the six-velocity computerized transmission’s torque converter. The electric motor receives its juice from a 288-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery p.C. Shared in large part with the Lexus LS600hL (which weighs 5220 kilos, or simply 1/2 a ton or so much less than the same old Hino 155h). Compared to their diesel-simplest opposite numbers, which arrive in August, the 155h and 195h weigh more or less 400 pounds greater.

Like a Toyota Prius and maximum other hybrids, the Hino vehicles will feature engine shutoff at idle and brake-regeneration structures, despite the fact that no natural-EV driving mode—the latter is not any marvel, given their weight. Nor can the electric motor serve as a generator to offer strength for anything component might be suited to the chassis. There's, however, an “Eco” mild inside the hybrid-related data show that illuminates whilst the motive force hurries up prudently and steps gingerly upon the brake pedal. Which means that extra sluggish-traveling field trucks. So hooray for that.

The electric strength will not catapult the fuel-economy ratings of both Hino hybrid into the Priusphere. But, in keeping with a Hino spokesman in the U.S., Toyota already has 12,000 or so of those structures on the road in Japan, and has determined that fuel financial system jumps by kind of 30 percent as compared to the 12 mpg or so of its diesel-best counterparts.

While this is the primary time hybrid technology like this has been applied to the industrial marketplace here in the U.S., this isn't always the primary time we’ve seen tremendous-sized hybrids—both Toyota and wellknown automobiles have been constructing hybrid town buses for years.