Volvo Trucks' XE13 powertrain package has been voted the North American trucking industry's most significant technical innovation of 2011. The Truck Writers of North America (TWNA) presented Volvo Trucks with the 21st annual TWNA Technical Achievement Award during a ceremony at the Technology Maintenance Council's spring meeting in Tampa FL recently.
First introduced in September 2011, the XE13 powertrain package boosts fuel efficiency by about 3% by lowering engine rpm at a given vehicle speed, a concept Volvo calls “downspeeding.”
“The benefits of downspeeding an engine are intuitive — lower engine rpm results in less fuel consumed — but virtually impossible to achieve without a perfectly harmonized powertrain.” said Ed Saxman, Volvo Trucks product manager-powertrain. “The intelligence of the Volvo I-Shift and proprietary software used in the XE13 package has created an incredible paradigm shift, so we now see the transmission controlling the engine.”
Available on Volvo VN series tractors, the XE13 powertrain package includes these components:
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Volvo D13 engine with 425 or 455 horsepower rating and 1750 lb-ft of torque
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Volvo I-Shift overdrive transmission with a 0.78:1 ratio
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Axle ratios of 2.64 to 2.69
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Proprietary software that facilitates seamless communication between Volvo's integrated powertrain components.
The XE13 package consistently operates in the engine's “sweet spot” — 1050 to 1500 rpm — with customer data indicating up to 70% of operation in the most efficient range of 1100 to 1200 rpm. Operating in this range yields about a 1.5% fuel efficiency improvement for every 100 rpm of downspeeding.