With stricter fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, research and development in the trucking industry just got more challenging. Last Friday, President Obama unveiled these new standards, but they won’t be phased in until in between model years 2014 and 2018. The advance notice will give OEMs the chance to recover from the tighter budgets and steep decline in truck sales brought on by the recession. This new focus on climate change and fuel economy is being viewed as the obvious next step for R&D, especially since stricter emissions standards have limited exhaust pollutants about as much as possible.

The fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks created by the Obama Administration and unveiled on Friday will radically alter the research and development focus of truck OEMs going forward, moving them away from reducing exhaust pollutants for the first time in decades.

“As concerns are shifting in Congress and the administration towards climate change and reducing oil imports, fuel economy naturally becomes more critical,” Dawn Fenton, director of policy for the Diesel Technology Forum (DTF) told FleetOwner.

Part of the reason for that shift, too, is that levels of “critical” exhaust pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) are now about as low as possible following the implementation of successively more restrictive emission standards in 2002, 2007 and 2010, she added.

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