Why Modern Heavy-Duty Trucks Demand Tougher Batteries
The episode explores how rising electrical demands in modern heavy‑duty trucks have driven the development of advanced TPPL batteries like the Odyssey Evolution ODV31, designed for deeper cycling, faster recharging, and proactive maintenance through integrated monitoring.
Episode 365: In this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report, Jamie Irvine interviews Daniel Jones, Application Engineer at EnerSys, about how modern heavy‑duty trucks place far greater electrical demands on batteries than ever before. Jones explains the evolution from flooded batteries to AGM and now to thin plate pure lead (TPPL) technology, highlighting how today’s vehicles—with telematics, sensors, HVAC, and hotel loads—require batteries capable of deeper cycling, faster recharge rates, and better performance in partial state of charge. He introduces the new Odyssey Evolution ODV31 battery, which offers improved cycle life, strong cranking power even at low voltage, enhanced vibration resistance, and integrated Odyssey Connect Bluetooth monitoring for proactive maintenance. The conversation emphasizes how fleets can reduce downtime, extend service intervals, and move from reactive to predictive maintenance using advanced battery technology and real‑time data.
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Sponsors of this Episode
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. In this episode, we’re going to discuss how modern heavy-duty applications are much more power intensive than they were in the past. And because of that, new technology is needed to be developed to meet the demands of our modern equipment. To help me with that, my guest today is Daniel Jones. Now, he is an Application Engineer at EnerSys. Daniel, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you here.
Daniel Jones
Hi, Jamie. Thank you, and always glad to be here.
Jamie Irvine
I’d like to start our conversation off with a true or false question. True or false, modern heavy-duty commercial vehicles require more from their batteries than 25 years ago?
Daniel Jones
That’s true. That’s true. And it’s not close. So today’s heavy-duty trucks demands are significantly more electrical power than anything we saw 25 years ago. Batteries went from starting the truck, really, just it needs that quick burst to energy. And then now we’re essentially rolling networks of electronics and cameras, telematics, sensors, all these devices. And that’s a huge shift from what we’ve seen back in the day where everything was almost manual. You had to manually do everything yourself, right? And these things didn’t exist.
Jamie Irvine
Go back in time a little bit for us and maybe give us a bit of history on the evolution of batteries before we discuss the battery that we’re here to talk about today.
Daniel Jones
Okay, so I mean, you know, the flooded battery, the flooded battery is great battery for starting trucks. It’s reliable battery for doing that. Now, the one things about, or the many things about flooded batteries is they don’t operate particularly well in partial states of charge and cycling. So they fall short on cycling. So anytime you cycle down a flooded battery, it’s not going to get very long life. So that’s kind of the thing that we’ve seen for years, and we still continue to see a lot of flooded batteries. And they’re great, they’re a great battery for starting trucks. So as we move more into cycling and needing to support loads after an engine’s off, we developed AGM batteries, absorb glass mat batteries, right? They’re sealed, they are more vibration resistant, and they are moderately more apt to handle those deeper depths of discharge and cycling. And then when we get into our battery, our thin plate pure lead type of AGM premium battery is more of an evolution, right? So the plates are thinner, we have more surface area, we have a faster recharge rate and a far better deep cycle performance.
Jamie Irvine
So I’m going to go back in time when I was selling batteries. I worked for a couple of distributors in my career. If I remember correctly, one of the issues with batteries that, you know, before the AGM battery came out, is that if those plates began to break down, then it reduced the capacity of the battery to hold a charge and do what it needed to do. So if I remember correctly, the AGM technology and having that mat surrounding those plates, like you said, that was really to help combat vibration and to protect those plates. Is that correct?
Daniel Jones
Yeah, that’s very accurate. So it helps that plate retention, right? If you think about those mats being in contact with the plates and keeping the electrolyte on the plates, that gives you a better surface area contact. So the more surface area you have, the more allowable depth of discharge and runtime you’ll have with a battery.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, and why does the AGM technology allow the battery to have those cycles, right? So we’re drawing the battery down, drawing it down. Now we’re charging it back up. We’re drawing it down, charging it back up. Why does the AGM technology handle that a little better?
Daniel Jones
Yeah, so it’s part of the components too as well, right? So we’re not just talking about a flooded battery with plates in it. We have this mat and all these other things. They do change up how the lead plates are made. and active material, all those things play a part. So they’re just designed in a way to support those loads, right? So it’s a designed, engineered effort to prolong that for the application. So our application used to only start vehicles. That’s all they did. Today they are starting and they’re basically a rolling hotel. We have found, OEMs have found, you know, moving to this AGM-style battery, and then progressively going into a more premium type of AGM battery is going to support those loads longer and do it more efficiently. So we’re looking at not only how does it support the loads once the truck is off, but how quickly can it recharge once we restart the truck. So that’s a huge deal as well. So that’s a duty cycle thing, right? Almost like a light switch coming on and off. Once we flip that light switch back on or crank that engine, and we want to get those batteries recharged just as quickly as we can if we’re hoteling, for an example, so we can shut that engine back off and they can go right back to hoteling.
Jamie Irvine
So at the time of recording, we’re about to leave for TMC. By the time people are listening to this episode, we’ll have just returned from TMC, the 2026 spring meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Now, your company at TMC debuted the Odyssey Evolution ODV31 battery. What’s different about this battery? How has it been empowered with some new technology?
Daniel Jones
Yeah, so this battery really is an evolution. I’m so excited about this battery. And we think about our extreme battery, for an example, and it’s got high cold cranking amps. And that’s one of the things it’s known for. It’s got 1,150 cold cranking amps. It can go 400 cycles for 80% depth of discharge. And what we were looking at is, especially on trucks with maybe an auxiliary battery bank. So instead of having just the four crank batteries, we also have four more batteries for a hotel load. So we have 8 batteries on a truck. Do we need 8 batteries with 1,150 cold cranking amps? So in our mindset, we’re thinking, okay, we can pull back a little bit on the cold cranking amps and extend our cycle life. And that’s what we’ve done. We pulled, so it’s right around 800 cold cranking amps now from 1,150, so it’s closer to our performance line, but it gives us about a 60% increase in cycle life. So we got a higher cycle life, better charge acceptance, stronger performance in partial state of charge. And that’s not something you’re gonna hear from a lot of folks is partial state of charge. What does that mean? And essentially what that means is as we drive battery voltage down, how well can we continue to crank an engine? And our partial state of charge on this battery is extremely great. So when we go down into that below 12 volts, so we’re talking about 11.8 or so volts, we’re really deeply discharged in the battery, we still provide high cold cranking amps. And that’s due to the compression of the plates. So we build our batteries with a lot of plates and we squeeze ’em into that case and that gives it really great contact with that pad. So that absorb blast mat and our active material and all those things that are inside a battery, We squeeze it in, we take every inch of that case, and we utilize every inch of that case, and we squeeze it in, and we push it in that battery. So that gives us a longer runtime for hotel loads and improved vibration resistance. So not only that, we also have within that battery the Odyssey Connect chip. So that’s going to monitor voltage and temperature over time. So yeah, it’s a great battery for those extended, repeated 70- 80% discharge events without losing life, it’s going to give you so much more cycle life.
Jamie Irvine
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We’re back from our break. Make sure you go and check out the links in our show notes to all of our sponsors.
Okay, let’s get back to this episode. So I’m going to read you a quote from Jim Bevan, Senior Director of Transportation Products at EnerSys. And then we’re going to do a bit of a deep dive because you just gave us the sales pitch on the battery and all the information about it, but we went pretty quick and I want to learn more. So here’s what Jim had to say,”As electrical loads increase across modern heavy duty platforms, fleets need batteries that can withstand deeper cycling, harsher conditions, and extended service intervals. By combining proven AGM construction with advanced TPPL technology, we’re delivering a solution built for reliability, durability, and a long-term value.” So can you explain to me in more depth why do batteries need to withstand deeper cycling today than they did, let’s say, 5, 10 years ago?
Daniel Jones
Sure, because trucks, they don’t shut off. It’s not like they used to where when you shut a key off and everything manually turned off, you’d go back three, four months down the road and you’d turn that truck back on and start it 25 years ago. Today we have those active telematics. It’s almost like you leave your keys or your headlights on. There’s instead of having 60 milliamps of parasitic draw, maybe for an example, we may have 250, 300 milliamps of draw, depending on what we have going on. They have refrigerators in these trucks, you know, so trucks don’t shut off. And the HVAC, the telematics, all of these things equal less life for a battery overall. So you have to you have to build the battery for the application. That’s what we’re doing. If we’re cycling deeply every day, a standard flooded battery, it starts to suffer permanent damage once you get past about 30 to 40% depth of discharge, our ODV can cycle up to 80% depth of discharge hundreds and hundreds of times. So instead of premature failures every season, fleets get a battery that matches the duty cycle of today’s trucks.
Jamie Irvine
Now, Jim mentioned extended service intervals. What’s driving the need for extended service intervals?
Daniel Jones
That’s trucks going down the road, right? So anytime a fleet has to down a truck, that’s revenue out the window. So when we can extend oil changes, we can extend any type of maintenance thing, like batteries or tires, we’ll keep that truck rolling down the road. We’ll keep the driver behind the wheel. He gets back home to his family when he’s supposed to be, and he gets back out on that road again. So that’s what we’re supporting here. That’s the effort we’re supporting, and that’s what we want for our end customer, is a long, maintenance-free, deep cycle battery. Starting and deep cycling.
Jamie Irvine
So when I was selling batteries, AGM technology was kind of the new thing. I mean, it wasn’t brand new. It had been around for a while, but it was what we were promoting. Tell me more about this TPPL advanced technology. Like, how does that take the AGM technology? that I was selling, let’s say 10, 12 years ago, to the next level. What is it all about?
Daniel Jones
It’s very descriptive, a thin plate, pure lead, and those plates are pure, so they’re calcium free. And why does that matter? What would that mean to an average individual? And what that essentially means is, it’s extremely low resistance, and it’s extremely resistant to corrosion. So the plates are more corrosion resistant. And what that really impacts fleets for is a lot of batteries live in partial state of charge. So they call that PSOC in the industry. And when you drive a battery down in voltage below 12.5, what begins to happen to the plates is they sulfate heavily. And when you’re calcium free and you’re free of other elements and you have a pure lead, they’ll resist that sulfation much more effectively and efficiently. And when we do go to recharge, it’ll clean off the plates easier. So from that standpoint, the technology part is your base materials are a more premium level, and it gives us that ability to shed that sulfation much easier when they sulfate. They will, off those batteries, once they’re discharged, that’s a natural process. They sulfate, and then when you recharge, it pulls that sulfation back off the plates. And that’s the part for our technology that is advantageous to lifecycle and also lifespan and recharge efficiency, really. So we get our, a lot of folks don’t want to talk about reserve capacity, and that’s one of those things where you have a battery that can run a certain amount of amperage for a certain period of time. When you start to sulfate a battery and you don’t fully recharge it, that runtime continues to get narrower and narrower and narrower to the point where, oh, I turned my key and it’s not cranking anymore after a couple days.
Jamie Irvine
Okay, so I think I said that acronym incorrectly when I asked you the question. So it’s TPPL, thin plate pure lead. Okay, that makes sense. So how does the Odyssey Connect system work? Because that was something that was highlighted in the press release about this new battery technology. And I wasn’t really familiar with how that’s working. I imagine that works through some form of telematics.
Daniel Jones
So our Odyssey Connect is a, it’s a Bluetooth app that pairs with the batteries within Bluetooth range. So it’s going to have a, the battery has a chip in it that monitors voltage and temperature over time. So it looks at things like excessive temperature or voltage extreme. So within the app on your phone, any Android or iOS device, you can download the Odyssey Connect app and you can look at battery extremes such as, hey, my battery voltage went too high, maybe. It went over 15 volts and that’s not good for a battery. Our battery voltage went too low. We went down way below 10.5 volts for an extended period of time. So a truck’s in a shop, needs a transmission or an engine or whatever. We didn’t unhook the batteries. All those things stayed alive. And that app can see that. And it says, okay, we stayed at four volts for three months. Not a battery issue, right? Definitely not a battery issue. So that’s like the most extreme thing. So the more granular things we can see would be, for an example, driver goes in and out, and down the road five days at a time. And he comes in on the weekends, very consistent. But then maybe there’s a vacations we have. I mean, we all take those, right? So we got a week long, maybe in July, and we got a week in Thanksgiving. We got a couple of weeks in Christmas or over the holidays there. And then we can see all we go back out to start our truck. What things could we have left on? Because we can see that on a graph. And we can see it on a chart. We can also see that temperature inflection of when they jumpstart a battery from a very low state of charge and they let that truck run, you’ll see the temperature climb with the voltage climb. So it’ll go from maybe the ambient temperature is 30 degrees outside. They jumpstart the truck. If those batteries are sulfated, have high internal resistance, what does internal resistance create when you hit it with a really high amperage? A lot of heat. So that battery is going to warm up and you’ll see that temperature trend, you’ll see those batteries go extremely, they’ll get fairly extremely hot. So all those things with big depths of discharge and extreme temperatures of heat, you’re going to dramatically decrease any battery’s life. So that’s the mindset behind Odyssey Connect. It is Bluetooth, so you have to be within Bluetooth range currently. Our projections, we are working really hard with getting that into a telematics platform. So that’s a future type of roadmap thing.
Jamie Irvine
So I understand if I own the truck, if I’m a fleet or if I’m an owner operator and I’ve got the app and it’s my battery, my truck, what if like I’ve dropped it off at a repair shop or I’ve got a mobile repair guy working on it? Are they able to just download the app and read everything as well?
Daniel Jones
Yeah, they can log in. They can log into that app just like you can and read that read that data.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so you can have you can you can tell the mechanic or the technician, hey, I’ve got this go ahead and check it. That way we don’t have any issues. That makes sense to me. So speaking of the fleets and the owners of this equipment, one of the things that a lot of companies talk about, as did Jim in his quote, as did the press release on this new battery, it talks about being more proactive when making maintenance decisions. That’s been a topic of discussion by most suppliers of parts because they understand that fleets are now so focused on uptime, making sure they make they keep those vehicles running as long as possible. How does this particular battery help accomplish that? And what should the users of your product be thinking about to be proactive and make sure that they don’t incur unscheduled downtime?
Daniel Jones
Yes, that’s a great question. It helps this app can help you identify high parasitic loads, for example, we may be driving deeper down in depth of discharge than they thought. And it gives you those data points, real life data. Is our battery being undercharged or overcharged? What are our cycling patterns? And I worked through this with a fleet yesterday. So, you know, for an example, we could pull the data on one series of vehicles and say, okay, this vehicle isn’t quite getting the battery life I expect. Why? I can’t see anything within our charting that would indicate that. And then we look at another vehicle that may be a different maker or model, and it’s getting extremely good battery life. They’re under the same application duty cycle. What can we look at here? So within that, we found, you know, our alternator in that application that wasn’t getting as good a battery life was overcharging the batteries at effectively a much higher rate. So under temperature, higher temperatures, it was charging too high. So the setting was off. That’s just one example.
Jamie Irvine
But it is a really good example. And that is something that I think we really have to have is that systems viewpoint, right? When we’re talking about electrical, it’s not just the battery, it’s all the rotating electric parts, it’s all the other components in the system that are at play. And I think that’s why I mean, we have to be more proactive now because there’s so many more things that could go wrong or be contributing to not getting the performance we were looking for.
Daniel Jones
Absolutely. So we’re looking at going from reactive to proactive, and then we’re going to get to the point where this data is so good, it’s predictive.
Jamie Irvine
That whole predictive opportunity seems to, it’s like, where’s the top of that, right? And it just seems like the upside to the the predictive maintenance has almost 0 limits because there’s so many opportunities to save a fleet or an owner operator that unexpected, you know, it’s one thing to have the vehicle planned to bring it into the shop and you’ve got planned downtime, that’s bad enough. But that unexpected, unscheduled downtime, that’s what really hurts.
Daniel Jones
And as we get into more of these numbers and we see a threshold or a point and we start setting up those guardrails, we can say, hey, you know, this is our threshold of where we’re standing at today, and it’s a warning, we should probably get that vehicle in and get it looked at, check all our connections, test our batteries. And this isn’t an unnecessary just random maintenance test now, right? It’s a specific pointed test to prevent those downtime situations. So that’s where when we hit those numbers, we can set off an alarm bell and that It’s such a great technology for that.
Jamie Irvine
We’ve talked a lot about this new product that your company has brought to market, and we’ve talked about the advancing technology. If there’s one thing you want people to remember from today’s conversation, what’s that one thing?
Daniel Jones
You know, as we think about batteries and partial state of charge and how well we can crank an engine from partial state of charge, I think that is what type of battery technology going to be most advantageous there because that’s where our trucks are living today. So that’s kind of what we’ve talked about this whole interview is the trucks are using power constantly and our batteries have to meet that need. So that’s where we’re adjusting and we’re evolving and we’re getting better at that. So as we do that and we think about partial state of charge, every battery is going to operate better at 100% state of charge. That’s just not today’s trucks. That’s unless we have them on a charger 24-7 and most applications and most fleets aren’t going to do that, we’re not going to live there. So the better we get at that, the better everyone else is going to get.
Jamie Irvine
You’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and we’ve been speaking with Daniel Jones, Application Engineer at EnerSys. To learn more about their Odyssey batteries, go to odysseybattery.com. Links are in the show notes. Daniel, thank you very much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. It was great to talk to you about the advancing technology in batteries.
Daniel Jones
Thank you, Jamie. It’s always a pleasure.
Jamie Irvine
And thank you for listening or watching to this episode. If you haven’t already, make sure you follow the show so you don’t miss out on any new content. And as always, I want to encourage you to be Heavy Duty.
