Product development

At UD Trucks, we are constantly thinking about tomorrow’s truck. As we begin to serve more and more markets around the world, we are faced with new demands from our customers—the one factor that drives our passion and innovation more than anything else.However, many of our newest technologies are not immediately apparent when you first look at our trucks. While we are proud of the ongoing refinements in the look of our vehicles, many of the factors making our trucks safer, more economical, and more versatile with reduced environmental impact are technologies within the vehicle.

FLENDS: UD Trucks’ Unique Technology

Diesel engines have high thermal efficiency and lower fuel consumption than gasoline engines—meaning lower CO2 emissions. Particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions are a more difficult issue: PM is produced at lower temperatures and during incomplete combustion, while NOx is produced during complete combustion at high temperatures. It was difficult, therefore, to find a system that could reduce both. In 2004, UD Trucks developed the Final Low Emission Diesel System (FLENDS), which combines ultra-high-pressure fuel injection with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology. FLENDS can reduce both PM and NOx emissions at the same time, but also provides low fuel consumption, and therefore reduced CO2 emissions. This was the first time ever that such as system was implemented on production trucks as a solution for attaining lower exhaust emissions from diesel engines.