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. Company officials discussed the 2007 engine rollout during the Great American Trucking Show.
The company already has 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 have production-ready engines being shipped to Freightliner Truck Plants for final system verification and should have emissions certification completed according to our plans,” said Tim Tindall, program director for EPA '07 for Detroit Diesel. “We have been extremely encouraged by the fuel economy performance of the test vehicles and customer demonstration vehicles. 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.”
According to Tindall, the EPA '07 engine program for Freightliner LLC is gearing up and final validation testing is well underway as the company nears emission certification.
“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 says.