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Heavy Vehicle Transportation Facility

The INL Transportation Facility is large enough to handle almost any heavy-vehicle integration, demonstration, or verification project. The Transportation Facility bays are specially designed to handle difficult fuel, engine, battery, or fuel cell issues with several air exchanges per hour and the necessary lifts and hoists to accommodate all equipment needs. The Facility is equipped with a 500-hp engine dynamometer that can simulate driving cycles. Its trained technicians and mechanics are certified to perform a variety of specialized tasks as well as in-house warrantee work on most of the 1,600 light- and heavy-duty vehicles in the INL fleet.

Transportation Facility capabilities exist to support complex engine or vehicle modifications and conversions, vehicle instrumentation and testing, complex data analysis, cooling and exhaust system modeling/testing, and large systems engineering/integration programs. The Facility is supported by well equipped analytical and research laboratories staffed by scientists and engineers from most technical disciplines. INL also possesses considerable economic analysis expertise that is capable of evaluating energy and life-cycle costs on components, vehicles, and transportation systems.

Expertise at the INL Facility is focused on the testing and analysis of vehicle and component technologies aimed at reducing petroleum use. In addition, the INL studies the affect of the advanced technology on maintenance and engine life, as well as the economic impact of technology introduction in a controlled fleet environment.

Energy Storage Technologies Laboratory

The Energy Storage Technologies Laboratory at the INL is a world leader in the testing and characterization of advanced battery and ultracapacitor technologies. It is the only national laboratory to fully document measurement uncertainty procedures for process and data quality, and has pioneered the development of advanced analysis procedures for battery and capacitor scaling, thermal management, capacity fade, and power fade. The Energy Storage Technologies Laboratory offers controlled testing on batteries, fuel cells, and ultracapacitors under conditions typical of electric, fuel cell, and hybrid vehicle applications. Tests can be performed on small laboratory scale components as well as large multi-component heavy-vehicle storage systems. The Energy Storage Technologies Laboratory at the INL is the lead DOE facility for hybrid vehicle battery performance and life-characterization studies. The INL has the expertise to support technology development, requirements and procedures development, performance and life testing, and modeling of advanced energy storage devices and systems.

Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity

The Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity (AVTA) is an INL managed DOE activity that tests advanced technology light-duty vehicles and the infrastructure necessary to support the vehicles. In conjunction with private sector testing partners, the testing has included the construction and operation of a hydrogen production and fueling pilot plant. The hydrogen, which is produced on-site by electrolysis, supports the testing of internal combustion engine vehicles operating on 100-percent hydrogen and blends of hydrogen and CNG fuels. The AVTA is also testing hybrid electric vehicles, with 1.2 million miles of maintenance, operations, and fuel economy data accumulated to date. Neighborhood and urban-electric vehicles are also included in the testing activity.

The INL develops vehicle test procedures with input from industry, fleet operators and other stakeholders to accurately measure real-world vehicle performance. These test procedures are then used to test production and pre-production advanced technology vehicles on dynamometers and closed test tracks as well as in government, commercial, and industrial fleets. By benchmarking the performance and capabilities of advanced technologies, the INL directly supports the development and validation of industry and DOE technical targets. The testing results are also leveraged to develop component, system, and vehicle models, as well as hardware-in-the-loop developmental laboratory testing.

Test results are available for the following vehicles:

• hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine vehicles
• hybrid-electric vehicles
• neighborhood electric vehicles
• urban electric vehicles
• full size electric vehicles
• airport support equipment
• and oil bypass filters used on buses