While the chip shortage and other constraints have affected Daimler Trucks North America as they have other vehicle manufacturers, the company’s still number one in Class 6-8 market share and plans to stay there as it pushes forward with zero-emissions, autonomous, and connected-vehicle technologies.
John O’Leary, the new chief at Daimler Trucks North America, talks about the challenges of a booming truck market, the launch of new vocational and electric trucks, its parent company, and more.
As it prepares to separate from Mercedes-Benz passenger car operations, Daimler Truck identifies some global weaknesses and outlines how it plans to target them – but North American operations stand out.
Daimler Trucks is rapidly ramping down its internal-combustion-engine development as it puts more research and development investments into its dual-focus zero-emissions strategy of both battery-electric and fuel-cell-electric commercial vehicles.
The first truck in the world looked like a cart with an engine and without a drawbar. The engine, called "Phoenix," was a four-horsepower-strong two-cylinder engine located at the rear.
Cummins will take over the development, production and delivery of medium-duty engines for Daimler Trucks and Buses around the world by the second half of the decade.
Daimler plans to spin off Daimler Truck as a separate business and establish two independent pure-play companies for truck/bus and autos, “designed to unlock the full potential of its businesses in a zero-emissions, software-driven future.”
An autonomous-truck partnership between Waymo and Daimler will produce a unique version of the Freightliner Cascadia fitted with integrated redundancy for all safety systems, rather than bolt-on components. It will be driven by Waymo's advanced AI driving system, The Waymo Driver.
Daimler Trucks showed off a Mercedes-Benz concept truck powered by fuel cells, with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers (more than 600 miles). Customer trials are to start in 2023. It also outlined when its battery-electric eActros trucks are projected to be available, with a first look at a long-haul version.
Unlike their competitors, Daimler Trucks and Torc Robotics won’t give a definitive timeline to deployment for driverless trucks — and say that in their development, they must be built from the ground up.
media brand
The secure and easy all-access connection to your content.
Bookmarked content can then be accessed anytime on all of your logged in devices!
Already a member? Log In
