Hyliion HE Drive Axle Wins Technical Achievement Award
From left to right: Chris Langley, VP of Fleet Relations, Hyliion; Jim Park, award committee chair; and Thomas Healy, founder and CEO, Hyliion. Photo courtesy Jim Winsor Award committee
“>
A powered auxiliary axle for road tractors from Hyliion has won the 2018 Jim Winsor Memorial Technical Achievement Award, the awards committee has announced.
Called 6x4HE, the fuel-saving electric drive-axle system was selected from five finalists by a panel of truck writers, and presented March 7, during the Technology & Maintenance Council’s Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Ga. Heavy Duty Trucking magazine’s Equipment Editor Jim Park is the award committee chairman. HDT Senior Editor Jack Roberts and Senior Contributing Editor Tom Berg were also members of the awards committee.
The award finalists were chosen by a group of 12 trade press editors, whose group was formerly the Truck Writers of North America’s Technical Achievement Award committee. TWNA was officially disbanded in 2017, but its directors provided funding so the Technical Achievement Award can continue indefinitely. The writers renamed the award to honor Jim Winsor, whose journalism career spanned more than 50 years in service to the trucking industry. Winsor worked his way through college by driving cargo trucks and then served in the U.S. Army as a Transportation Corps lieutenant. He was active with the Truck Maintenance Committee, forerunner to today’s TMC.
The Technical Achievement Award was first presented in 1992 by TWNA. To be eligible, a product or service has to show technical innovation, have a wide applicability and availability in trucking, and offer significant benefits.
The electric axle, when added to a truck or tractor, acts as a hybrid system, capturing braking energy and converting it to electricity, then uses that energy to help launch the vehicle and propel it up hills. This relieves the engine of some of its usual work, saving fuel. It …Read the rest of this story
