Vehicle Energy Recovery through an Intelligent Turbo Assist System

A Caterpillar-led consortium is developing a turbocharger system that turns a heavy-duty diesel engine's exhaust heat into usable energy instead of wasting it. Diesel engines in trucks, ships, and generators waste a large fraction of their fuel energy as hot exhaust gas. Current turbochargers recover some of this, but the VERITAS project aims to capture far more by adding an intelligent electrical assist and control system. The team—including BorgWarner, Imperial College London, and Loughborough University—is building advanced air-system hardware and the software controls to manage it. The goal is to improve transient engine response (the lag when a driver hits the accelerator) while simultaneously recovering energy that would otherwise be lost. If the technology works at scale, the potential impact is large but narrow. The consortium estimates that applying these methods across the UK's entire heavy-duty diesel fleet could cut diesel CO₂ emissions by 10 percent—roughly 1.2 million tonnes annually. That is a meaningful slice of the UK's transport emissions, achieved without changing the fuel or the vehicle, only the engine's breathing and energy recovery systems. For fleet operators, the benefit would be lower fuel costs; for the public, a reduction in the carbon footprint of goods movement and power generation.