The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with Shell’s boldness surrounding its Shell Starship program. The company held a press event last week for Starship 3, the third iteration of a truck that was designed to push the freight efficiency envelope.
Way back in 2015, I was invited by Shell to a media event at a pub in Louisville, Kentucky, during the Mid-America Trucking Show. It was there that we were introduced to Bob Sliwa, who eventually built and drove the first Starship. A few months later, Shell engaged NACFE to provide technology and efficiency advice and to validate freight efficiency measured as ton-miles per gallon, not just miles per gallon. According to Shell, freight ton efficiency is “an indication of how effectively energy is being used to transport cargo from A to B.” It is calculated by multiplying the mass of goods being moved (in U.S. tons) by the truck’s fuel economy (in U.S. mpg) to create a ton-miles per gallon metric, Shell says.
The performance of the first Starship was good, but not great. I think that was in part because Shell was trying to do something akin to a U.S. Department of Energy SuperTruck without the SuperTruck budget. It was amazing to me that they were able to build a truck that was capable of traveling cross-country even though the efficiency numbers did not meet their expectations.
But they were not daunted by the results of their first efforts and came back in 2019 with Starship 2, which performed better. The first two Starship trucks were powered by diesel engines. For the most recent generation of Starship, Shell switched to a natural gas engine.
With each of these three trucks, Shell focused on lightweighting, low aerodynamic drag, and low rolling resistance tires as ways to maximize freight ton efficiency.
See also: Shell launches Starship 3.0 with major efficiency gains in an ICE package
In addition, Shell has built a second Starship 3 in China, which incorporates a hybrid electric powertrain. I may talk about that in a future blog a bit down the road.
This whole effort has been a journey and an incredible effort on the part of Shell, not to mention a significant investment. I am not sure what the future holds for the Starship program, but I think we need to acknowledge the work Shell has done to try to help the industry find ways to improve fuel efficiency.
It is especially notable when you focus on the fact that an oil, gas, and lubricants company is behind the effort. In some ways, it seems counterintuitive, but the last sentence of its press release on Starship 3 sums up the company’s philosophy: “As Shell works to bring innovation and energy solutions across the transport industry, Shell Starship will continue to collaborate across the industry to push the boundaries of what is possible for a lower carbon future in fleets.”
I, for one, want to thank Shell for continuing to push those boundaries and for allowing NACFE to be a partner on the road to the decarbonization of trucking.
