AM General has unveiled a hybrid-electric concept of the Humvee, which the company said showcases potential for a “quickly-fieldable solution” in the vehicle electrification space.
Brian Kuykendall, AM General’s executive director of product development, told
Defense Daily the company brought the Humvee Charge concept to last week’s Association of the United States Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. to gather feedback and help inform requirements for the service’s burgeoning interest in hybrid-electric platforms.
“The philosophy with [this concept] was to be minimally disruptive to the current Humvee automotive system while still giving those capabilities like exportable power, silent watch and silent mobility. And, to the greatest extent possible, we looked at leveraging [commercial off-the-shelf] components and technologies to help shorten that gap from development to fielding and still achieving affordability targets,” Kuykendall said.
The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) has been leading the service’s exploration of vehicle electrification, which included recently wrapping up testing with two hybrid-electric Bradley vehicle prototypes that the office’s leader said yielded “good data” (Defense Daily, Aug. 25).
Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the RCCTO director, has previously noted there are also plans to prototype with two hybrid-electric Humvees, three Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and four Strykers, and will transfer lessons learned to the Army’s Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems.
Kuykendall confirmed to Defense Daily that AM General’s work on the Humvee Charge is not tied in directly with the RCCTO effort, but said the Army’s interest in the vehicle electrification space drove its effort to explore the hybrid-electric concept.
“We’ve been monitoring multiple signals from our customer base in terms of where they’d like to go with capabilities in that type of platform,” Kuykendall said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to get that customer feedback and showing where the art of the possible is in terms of relatively quickly-fieldable solutions.”
After gathering feedback on the Humvee Charge concept, Kuykendall said AM General will look at building a working prototype “in the coming months.”
Kuykendall noted that Banks Power is AM General’s partner for the concept’s hybrid powertrain and that the vehicle features a 30 kilowatt hour (kWh) battery pack to enable the electrification capabilities.
“We think that [30 kWh] is going to be right in the wheelhouse, so to speak, of managing, obviously, the onboard extra weight that you would add in but still getting the type of capabilities from an exportable power, silent watch and silent mobility perspective,” Kuykendall said.
AM General is also assessing whether the hybrid-electric concept could be applied as a retrofit for existing Humvees, with the Army and Marine Corps still maintaining thousands of the vehicles, or if it could be offered as a new platform.
“That’s what we want to better explore and understand exactly, how our customers would want to use this vehicle. Would they want this built from the ground-up as a new [solution]? Do they want to put this capability onto certain existing vehicles, maybe just portions of it? Maybe just putting the exportable power onto existing vehicles? [This concept] is really meant to drive that dialogue,” Kuykendall said.
AM General is also the new manufacturer for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, after it beat out incumbent Oshkosh Defense [OSK] for the 10-year re-compete production contract which may cover delivery of up to 20,682 vehicles and up to 9,883 JLTV Trailers (Defense Daily, Feb. 9).