ARMY PULLS PLUG ON HYBRID HUMMERS

It seemed like a green dream, ready to come true: the Army replac­ing its gas-​​chugging Humvees with clean, enviro-​​friendly elec­tric hybrids. But, for now, it’ll have to stay a wish unful­filled. The Army has decided to stop fund­ing the devel­op­ment of the hybrid Hummers, National Defense mag­a­zine reports.
During the past decade, the Army has sup­ported a num­ber of devel­op­ment pro­grams to equip mil­i­tary vehi­cles with hybrid-​​electric engines, but none has tran­si­tioned yet to full pro­duc­tion. The hybrid Humvee was viewed as one of the more promis­ing efforts, with at least six pro­to­types in the works.
Although the Army con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the enor­mous logis­tics bur­dens of trans­port­ing mil­lions of gal­lons of fuel to com­bat zones, it has not yet been con­vinced that hybrid-​​electric engines are the way to go. Hybrid sys­tems, though more fuel effi­cient, have proved to be more expen­sive and less rugged than advo­cates had hoped.
We have to prove that it works as touted, said Claude Bolton, assis­tant sec­re­tary of the Army for acqui­si­tion, tech­nol­ogy and logis­tics. It has yet to be seen whether hybrid vehi­cles will ever be accepted in the Armys truck fleets, he told an indus­try con­fer­ence.
Another hybrid pro­to­type now in devel­op­ment is the Armys wrecker, the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck. The man­u­fac­turer of the HEMTT, Oshkosh Truck Corp., equipped the vehi­cle with a hybrid sys­tem sim­i­lar to one now in use in civil­ian trucks, such as fire engines.
But the Army is not yet per­suaded that the HEMTT should be hybrid, said Lt. Col. Lisa Kirkpatrick, pro­gram man­ager for Army heavy trucks.
We need to test it against con­ven­tional power train, she said. I have told Oshkosh to be pre­pared to go back to con­ven­tional power train if hybrid elec­tric doesnt work. I dont know if hybrid elec­tric will deliver what it promises.

April 27th, 2004 | Cammo Green, Ground Vehicles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.