Cummins, the century-old maker of diesel engines, has launched an entirely new brand to focus entirely on zero-emissions power for every application from trucking to powering homes.
Cummins CEO Jennifer Rumsey announced the new brand, Accelera, at an in-person and live-streamed event in Washington, D.C., where she expanded on the company’s recent fuel-agnostic philosophy and extended it to Accelera’s mission of fully zero tailpipe emissions.
Rumsey said Accelera would call on Cummins’ “unmatched global scale and footprint,” its “strong relationships with customers and partners,” and its “deep understanding of customer applications” to launch the new brand.
“We are announcing today a new brand for our new power business; a business that has the broadest range of zero-emissions technologies to support the commercial and industrial vehicle application,” said Rumsey. “We have a leading position today in zero-emissions technologies and are really building up our capabilities. It’s time that we were recognized as both an engine solutions provider and also a zero-emissions solutions provider.”
The announcement comes on the heels of Rumsey’s speech at the Green Truck Summit in Indianapolis, where she said, “You can see a future where the need for engines will decrease” and touted the company’s five recent acquisitions in the space.
At the Accelera launch, Rumsey said Cummins’ New Power Business has grown and is projected to do between $350 million and $400 million this year, which she expects to grow to between $6 billion to $13 billion by 2030.
“We are the leader today in the U.S. commercial vehicle market in electrified products, and we have hundreds of electrolyzers around the world,” including a 20-megawatt Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer in Canada and 2,000 other electrolyzer sites around the world.
“Cummins will be a leader in zero-emissions solutions,” Rumsey said, noting the new Accelera business has 2,000 employees, many from Cummins and its acquisitions.
Rumsey then introduced Amy Davis, Cummins’ former vice president and president of new power, as the leader of Accelera.
Davis opened by saying that when she started at Cummins in 1995, a good friend “gave me a hard time” for working for a company that makes diesel engines.
“I’m excited. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines and complain,” she told her friend.
Davis said Accelera’s name came from the words accelerate (as in propulsion), era (as in a new era), and et cetera (as in an interactive approach).
“That’s why we’re about pursuing the most promising path forward for our customers,” said Davis. “There’s no other pure plays out there that have the support and backing of a company like Cummins; the manufacturing scaling capacity; the engineers around the world and a global footprint that can support these applications when they’re in service.”
Accelera’s portfolio will include “electrified products” such as battery packs, battery management systems, inverters, motors, traction systems that integrate e-axles and control systems to “tie it all together,” according to Davis.
“This puts us in the unique position to provide either components, subsystems or even integrated vehicle systems for customers, and we’re doing it today,” she said. “It really all starts with the electric drivetrain and the electric system.”
Just as you might find a Cummins engine under the hood of a freight train or industrial mining machine, Accelera hopes to reach all these places with zero-emissions power. Davis gave particular weight to the prospect of PEM electrolizers extending battery electric range with hydrogen fuel cells.
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Alex Lockie