DALLAS, Tex. — At the Great American Trucking Show (GATS), Freightliner announced that it is continuing with rigorous preparations for the three EPA 07 compliant engines it will launch early next year, the heavy-duty Detroit Diesel Series 60(r) and MBE 4000, and the medium-duty MBE 900.

The company has already begun the emissions certification process for the engines with the expectation of being fully certified by start of production in January.

During the course of the testing process, Freightliner is on target to achieve expected accumulation of nearly 25 million miles of lab and reliability growth testing across the Detroit Diesel Series 60, MBE 4000 and MBE 900 engines; a robust Customer Demonstration Program to gauge how the products will perform for the end user; extensive training of the service network; and readily available service parts at service network locations all over North America.

“We have production-ready engines being shipped to Freightliner Truck Plants for final system verification and should have emissions certification completed according to our plans,” said Tim Tindall, program director for EPA 07 for Detroit Diesel. “We have been extremely encouraged by the fuel economy performance of the test vehicles and customer demonstration vehicles.”

All vehicles are using ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and the vehicles are demonstrating fuel consumption levels very close to the current vehicles. In controlled testing, fuel consumption of the 2007 vehicle is within one percent of the 2006 vehicle, says Tindall.

According to Tindall, the EPA 07 engine program for Freightliner is gearing up and final validation testing is well underway as the company nears emission certification; however, he notes that the effort to get to this point has been filled with myriad readiness and preparation activities.

“We are running with full production intent hardware, software and calibration and for the Series 60 engine alone, we have accumulated 11 million miles and are targeting 14 million miles by the time the first engine comes off the assembly line in January,” Tindall explained.