At the end of October, the UK-based Freight Transport Association sent out a resolutely frustrated press release. Changes to truck design are too slow, it cried, and FTA members are spending hundreds of thousands to retrofit cabs, improving aerodynamics and safety elements which could, in theory, be standard on the vehicles available today.
Surely it should not be the case that in 2013 fleet owners are spending a hefty slice of their budget to make sure their trucks have what many would regard as basic features if applied to the European passenger car market.
Soon after the FTA commented on Europe’s worryingly slow design progress, Dr Manfred Schuckert, Head of Global Regulatory Strategy, Commercial Vehicles, at Daimler took to the stage at Automotive World’s Megatrends Europe ’13 conference.
“We are not done in Europe yet,” Schuckert said firmly. For Daimler, Euro VI is not the be all and end all for European truck emissions legislation, and the OEM has some very determined plans for the future. Speaking at October’s American Trucking Associations conference, Wolfgang Bernhard, Chief Executive of Daimler Trucks Division, called for a new approach to emissions regulations, one which takes into account the savings that can be made across the whole vehicle, not only on the engine. Furthermore, he commented, legislators should take into account any technologies that have yet to be invented.
No short order from Bernhard then, but clearly he is not the only one to think that now is the time to look at the vehicle as one whole unit. However, achieving a high truck standard – whether it is through design or regulation – is only part of the problem. There needs to be more cooperation between North America and Europe, to homogenise regulations between the two markets, and Bernhard believes that the removal of tiny variations would do wonders to simplify business standards for global OEMs.
This holistic approach to the future of commercial vehicle developments and markets is not solely an OEM ideal, however. Also speaking at Megatrends Europe ’13, Franz Dorfer, General Manager of the Engineering Center Steyr at Magna Steyr, said that a prime consideration for energy efficient trucks should be the way they share the road with other vehicles.
“We can make the trucks better and better, but what we really need is intelligent traffic,” Dorfer said. Truck-to-truck communication should be possible – it should not just be passenger cars which benefit from V2X communication systems.
Despite many, including Frost & Sullivan, predicting that the market as a whole will become more technology conscious – adopting more safety systems, increasingly considering ABS, stability control systems, tyre pressure monitoring, vision-based systems and advanced telematics – it looks like regulation, as ever, will be the biggest driver behind any developments. Whether the traditionally slow pace of legal debate and subsequent change can keep up with the rate of tech development, however, is another matter.
Ruth Dawson
