| The Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED) Alpha was given a shakedown testing Feb. 15 at a Michigan test center. The FED team wanted to tackle possible mechanical challenges locally prior to upcoming testing at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD. U.S. Army TARDEC photo by Brian Ferencz. |
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The FED Alpha not only saves fuel on its own, it also generates electricity. “It has an integrated starter-generator that sits between the engine and the transmission. It can generate 30 KW of outboard power.” The idea behind that, Johnson explains, is that “everyone wants to plug in. If I have a really big radar system I need to power, normally that would require another vehicle with a fuel-burning generator on a trailer to run it – but I can do it with just the vehicle.”
While not quite as much fly-by-wire as today’s consumer cars and trucks – the steering is still mechanical and not electrical, for instance – the Alpha has a feedback mechanism built into the accelerator to let the driver know when he or she is operating at maximum fuel economy… or not. “It will start to vibrate when you drive the vehicle inefficiently,” Johnson laughs. “The vehicle is constantly training you on how to drive it.”
That training can come to naught, it turns out, if the driver doesn’t learn. “The studies that we’ve done show that, while I can make the vehicle 70 percent more efficient, a bad driver can wipe out 35 percent of that.”
“At the end of the day I didn’t cut any corners. I didn’t roll out the University of Michigan solar car. This truck can still do the same things a Humvee can do – only 70 percent more efficiently. And I’m comparing it to the M1114 that was developed back when I was in elementary school.”