Supertruck 3: Ultra-Efficient Long-Haul Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tractor

This section presents a consolidated summary of research activities conducted under the SuperTruck 3 (ST3) workstream, focusing on advanced traction inverter technologies,

inverter reliability and lifetime extension, and system-aware control strategies for Class

8 hybrid trucks (combining hydrogen fuel cells and batteries). The work encompasses

the development and testing of a baseline modular SiC inverter, as well as the hardware

design and control verification of emerging multi-level GaN and current-source inverter

(CSI) topologies, and the implementation of environment-aware control concepts.

Hardware prototyping, experimental testing, and mission-profile-based modeling were

employed to quantify efficiency, thermal behavior, total harmonic distortion (THD), and

reliability tradeoffs. Ongoing and future research directions include the development of

physics-informed-data-based digital twins for traction inverters, enabling real-time

condition monitoring, adaptive control, and remaining useful life (RUL) prediction under

realistic drive cycles.