Newest version of Shell Starship breaks previous marks

September 3, 2021

Land Line Staff

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The updated 2.0 version of the Shell Starship produced results greater than the company’s initial cross-country run in 2018, said a Shell news release dated Sept. 1.

On its journey from San Diego to Jacksonville, Shell Starship 2.0 achieved 254 ton-miles per gallon for freight ton efficiency – which is 3.5 times better than the North America average freight ton efficiency for trucks, said the release.

In addition, Shell Starship 2.0 recorded 10.8 miles per gallon, an improvement over the 8.94 mpg for Starship 1.0 and 6.4 mpg for the North American fleet average, according to the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, which monitored and verified the trip. Lastly, Starship 2.0 beat the 178 ton-miles per gallon achieved in 2018 while carrying 47,100 pounds, an 18% increase in payload.

“With increasing efforts to decarbonize road freight, we saw an opportunity to further demonstrate that the use of today’s efficient technologies can offer significant benefits to fleets,” Jeff Priborsky, global marketing manager for the on-highway fleet sector for Shell Lubricant Solutions, said in the news release. “Understanding that not all fleets run fully loaded from coast-to-coast, we felt it was important to conduct a variety of tests to provide additional data that can show how trucking efficiencies work in different conditions, in order to provide tangible benefits to the freight transport industry.”

A 400-mile short-haul evaluation was also completed in North Carolina with NACFE again in charge of verification.

“The efficiency testing with different payloads and miles driven demonstrate that efficient technologies have significant benefits for long-haul and shorter regional-haul applications,” Robert Mainwaring, technology manager for innovation for Shell Lubricants, said in the news release. “Fleets and owner-operators can evaluate which technologies are most beneficial for them and pursue them today to find significant fuel savings and carbon emissions reductions.”
According to the analysis provided by the Shell release, if every truck in North America could be as efficient as the Shell Starship 2.0, a potential annual reduction of 275 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in North America would be possible.

The Shell Starship was designed to draw together energy-efficient technologies to demonstrate what could be achieved driving a Class 8 truck in real world conditions.

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