Mack Trucks celebrated Earth Day Friday in Austin, Texas – consistently ranked among the “greenest” cities in the U.S. – by unveiling its 2017 MP series engines.
Keeping in step with the Texas capital’s aggressive greenhouse and NOx reduction goals, John Walsh, vice president global marketing and brand strategy for Mack Trucks, says Mack’s new generation engines boost fuel efficiency from 2.1 to 8.8 percent compared with prior model year engines with additional upgrades in power and productivity, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
For the coming model year, Mack’s 11-liter MP7 and 13-liter MP8 engines get a handful of advancements designed to simplify maintenance and improve efficiency and productivity.
Both engines feature an updated wave piston design that Mack says raises the compression ratio and enables more complete combustion of fuel and a common-rail fuel system that more precisely injects fuel and reduces soot. Combined with a two-speed coolant pump, Mack says these features help increase MP7 fuel efficiency by up to 5.1 percent and MP8 fuel efficiency by up to 5 percent.
Targeting long-haul applications, Mack will offer its 2017 MP8 engine with a turbo compounding system engineered to increase in power and efficiency. Turbo compounding converts waste energy from the exhaust into mechanical energy that is fed back to the engine. The system adds up to 50 additional horsepower, enabling an increase of fuel efficiency of up to 8.8 percent.
Also for 2017, Mack Trucks will offer Mack Predictive Cruise, an intelligent system that memorizes a route when cruise control is on, storing up to 4,500 hills in its memory.
The next time the driver travels the route, Mack Predictive Cruise engages Mack mDrive automated manual transmission to choose the most fuel-efficient gear.
