Ed Saxman, Volvo Trucks product manager – powertrain, with the 2011 TWNA Technical Achievement Award.Volvo Truck’s XE13 powertrain package was honored as the 2011 Technical Achievement Award winner by the Truck Writers of North America Wednesday at the American Trucking Associations’ TMC annual meeting in Tampa, Fla.
“It’s an incredible honor to be recognized by the Truck Writers of North America,” says Ron Huibers, president, Volvo Trucks North American sales and marketing. “We truly appreciate their thorough evaluations of our XE13 package, a proprietary solution that provides just a glimpse at the future potential of Volvo Trucks’ integrated powertrain.”
First introduced in September 2011, Volvo Trucks’ XE13 powertrain package is said to boost fuel efficiency by 3 percent 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,” says 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.”
