21 E-Mobility Engineering | September/October 2025 Mack Trucks LR Electric | Dossier taken into the equation to get us to our engineering formula and the whole stop-start process is a massive two thumbs up.” The closed-loop operation makes this an ideal sector for electrification and Fotopoulos says that as the refuse vehicle leader in North America, Mack had a duty to deliver and to make things as easy as possible. Consequently, the LRe began with the same chassis and cab platform as its ICE equivalent, a well-established industry leader. Along with the obvious environmental benefits of zero tailpipe emissions, electrifying the LR platform offered the promise of reduced noise and vibration to create a healthier and safer working environment; instant torque at zero rpm for better operational efficiency; and reduced maintenance and operating expenses to make it cheaper to run. The challenge was in designing a powertrain system that would be capable of handling such a demanding duty cycle, maintaining consistent performance across the speed range and coping with the varying ambient temperatures found in the many different markets that these vehicles serve. The company leant on the expertise of its owners, Volvo Group – which has been electrifying its products since 2009 – to deliver the conversion. It used that existing product technology as a baseline for its conversion, benefitting from economies of scale and readybaked efficiencies to take the LRe from prototype to production in just two years. “We began electrifying our mediumduty trucks in the 20-teens, but the technology wasn’t robust enough to handle this type of heavy-duty truck,” recalls Fotopoulos. “The batteries and EV motors needed to evolve because we needed a lot of torque and gallon average for a typical dieselengine garbage truck, as calculated by the US Alternative Fuels Data Center. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, this emits just over 10 kg of CO2 per gallon – equating to 3.3 kg of CO2 per mile, which is 10 times that of the average US car. At the request of the Department of Sanitation of New York City (DSNY) in 2019, Mack began to explore the potential of eliminating this by electrifying its LR chassis. They immediately struck upon the electric treasure trove of regenerative braking – and soon discovered that with a duty cycle involving so much stopping, there is a lot of energy to gain. “That’s where the LR Electric [LRe] actually excels,” says the company’s VP of electromobility, George Fotopoulos. “The vehicle makes hundreds of stops per day and the more stops you have, the more efficient it becomes. As a result, it’s not abnormal to have a 25% regen coming back into the battery during a normal day. “As you put more waste in, the vehicle gets heavier and you get even better energy recovery. It’s also very predictable because every day the truck does a set route, and it does the same routes every week. That was The challenge was in designing a powertrain system that would be capable of handling such a demanding duty cycle The original design for the Mack LRe refuse vehicle chassis
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