ORLANDO – Advanced technology, from platooning to electric trucks – both of which you’ll be seeing soon from the nation’s biggest truck maker – was a key topic of a reporter roundtable with Daimler Trucks North America President and CEO Roger Nielson during the American Trucking Associations Management Conference & Exhibition.
But Nielson emphasized that exciting, headline-grabbing topics such as platooning or advanced driver assistance systems and automated technology are only partially a means in and of themselves.
He compared the research to the space program, where society benefitted from technology developments adapted from the race to the moon and beyond, such as LEDs, improved radial tires, freeze-drying technology and more.
“We didn’t end of going to the moon and finding gold, it’s more about what we discovered along the way.”
‘Watch soon for the availability of active lane keeping as an option, which is a step on the path to platooning and other automated and driver assistance technologies.
“We believe active lane keeping is absolutely required to make platooning work properly,” Nielson said. “We are not ready to announce a market availability of platooning yet, although you’ll see us come out soon with active lane keeping as yet another advanced driver assistance system. That is the way to go and with platooning, that’s absolutely going to be required to keep the driver of the second truck safe and less fatigued.”
As it announced at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show last month, DTNA has been testing its own platooning system.
“If you haven’t ever driven in truck number two you should do it some time; it’ll scare the crap out of you, because you’re just not used to driving 45 feet behind a stainless silver trailer door.”
He emphasized that DTNA does not want to use terms such as “autonomous” or “driverless trucks.” “You’ll see us change language to advanced driver assistance systems, or active safety, you won’t see us talk about autonomous. This idea that trucks are going to be driverless in our near future, we don’t believe in that.”
A driver’s job is much more than simply steering and acceleration, he said, including customer service, pre- and post-trip inspection, and handling issues that come up on the road.
“I can’t imagine hitting a truck and pulling over to exchange license and insurance and finding there’s no driver,” he said.
Society simple isn’t ready for a “driverless truck,” Nielson contended. There’s a lot that goes on in an autonomous driving situation that still is hard to program. You can’t with automatous driving Cath the eyes of the driver who’s to the right or left of you at a four way stop. That’s key to get though a four way stop, you all look at each other to figure out who’s going to do what. We’ve seen incidents perorated to us from the car side where cars get stopped at an intersection because heavy traffic never clears but the car is programmed to only cross the intersection if it’s legal, if there’s space of you on the opposite side of the opposite crosswalk, if there’s space the guy comes in on the perpendicular lane and fills it up. yo[‘ll set that green light for 100 times in rush hour traffic waiting for that spot to be open.
“These types of things it’s hard to go in and program. Every instance that a truck drier would fave on a freeway or highway or side street, what have you, to do autonomous driving you have to imagine that.” And then program it.
However, if you actually believe in autonomous trucking, “everything we’re doing on active safety leads us on that path…. Anything that could make a truck drive without a driver can also help make a truck driver safer.”
Electric trucks
Potentially more likely to become a reality sooner is the use of electric trucks. Nielson pointed out that the Mitsubishi Fuso eCanter, owned by DTNA’s parent company, is being tested by two big carriers — UPS in the U.S. and 7-11 in Japan.
“With eCanter we really have the first commercially viable electrified battery electric vehicle in the market being sold in volume, let’s call it,” Nielson said. “We have it out on a two year lease, we call this eCanter version 1.0 and version 2.0 will be introduced in two years.”
Version 2.0 will have a vehicle that is more fully designed to be designed from the ground up to be electric. You’ll see weight taken out of it and power put into it to increase the range.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Daimler has the Mercedes Urban eTruck, a medium truck with a range about double that of the eCanter and the type of GVWs that make sense on heavier vehicles. Trials are going on with eight customers.
So that’s light-duty and medium-duty — in the U.S. they’re working on heavy duty to electrify a Cascadia, and “you will see it rather soon on the road,” Nielson said. “We won’t put out a press release on it and drive it and see if you guys can catch up to us.”
Real-world advances
However, Nielson noted, this high tech wizardry is just a part of what DTNA is working on.
“Advanced technologies, be it platooning, be it automated driving, or battery electric vehicles, do not dominate our discussions or developments,” Nielson said. “Our development plan it to bring fuel efficiency and active safety to our customers year over year.”
Among the things it’s working on nearer term, DTNA is getting ready for its next round of fuel economy improvements on the Freightliner Cascadia.
“We’ve done well keeping ahead of the competition,” Nielson said. “The competition never sleeps, but neither do we.” Part of that will be new “taller” tandem drive axles that will require a multi million dollar investment in new machining capabilities to manufacture the larger gears.
Another big focus is the Detroit Connect platform. A new Detroit Connect mobile app was announced for Freightliner and Western Star customers who have an active Detroit Connect subscription. This allows those customers to access information about their vehicles’ performance without needing to be at a desk or on a computer. Also announced was that the the Detroit Connect Virtual Technician remote diagnostic system can now deliver remote fault event diagnostics for Detroit DT12 automated manual transmissions.
Earlier this year, the company announced that late this year, additional features of Detroit Connect Remote Updates, such as fleet-initiated remote engine parameter programming and Detroit-initiated firmware updates, will be rolled out to new Cascadia customers.
This over the air updates, Nielson said, are part of a number of ways the company is working to improve customer uptime.
“It’s another initiative we have in place to eliminate every instance where at truck has to come into the dealership to be serviced. It’s like having to take your iPhones back to the genius bar every time you need a new IOS.”
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