Srikanth Padmanabhan, president of Cummins Inc.’s engine business, speaks during the panel discussion entitled “Strengthening the Community Through an Educated Workforce” held at the Columbus Learning Center Lecture Hall on May 2, 2019.
COLUMBUS — Cummins Inc. recently announced plans to start selling unified engine platforms that can accommodate a range of lower-emission fuels in what the company claims are the first of its type on the market.
The platforms, which the Columbus-based company has described as “fuel-agnostic,” seek to help fleets transition to lower-emission technologies and will expand the portfolios of the B, L and X-Series engines, the company said.
Each engine platform will share a common architecture but can be optimized for different fuel sources, including hydrogen, natural gas and clean diesel. Essentially, the bottom of part of the engine would look the same no matter which fuel source is used, but the top part would be set up differently depending on the fuel source.
In other words, the top of a natural gas engine would be different than a hydrogen engine, though both would share the same base.
“This is a new way of designing and developing lower-emission internal combustion powertrains that meet the unique needs of the transportation industry while leveraging the benefits of a common product architecture and footprint where possible,” said Jonathon White, vice president of engineering for Cummins.
The announcement came amid a push by Cummins to invest in and develop technologies that seek to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of its products and secure the company’s place in a world that is shifting away from fossil fuels.
In 2021, Cummins said it had started testing a hydrogen-powered internal combustion engine.
The company said the unified engine platforms announced Monday are an important element of its environmental goals.
“Getting to zero is not a light-switch event,” Srikanth Padmanabhan, president of Cummins’ engine business, said in a statement.
“Carbon emissions that we put into the atmosphere today will have a lasting impact,” he said. “This means anything we can do to start reducing the carbon footprint today is a win for the planet. We need to take action now. Having a variety of lower carbon options is particularly important considering the variation in duty cycles and operating environments across the many markets we serve. There is no single solution or magic bullet that will work for all application types or all end users.”