MAN seeks clarity from legislators on autonomy and carbon emissions

MAN Truck and Bus enjoyed its best year for truck sales for a decade in 2018 but speaking at a press conference yesterday UK MD Thomas Hemmerich warned that the “legislative environment going forward is hard to read so is more challenging than before”.

These challenges include automation, digitisation, connectivity and alternative fuels, and one of the biggest is the steep cuts on C02 emissions required by the European Commission – 15% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 for trucks over 16 tonnes – but Hemmerich said the “disruption” this would bring to the market “also brought opportunities”.

MAN will be showing its new 15-tonne CitE electric truck as well as the eTGE electric van at the CV Show and Hemmerich said “MAN will place its bets in the best way and will cover all bases” when it came to developing low and zero emissions trucks.

But he questioned which fuels are really low emissions on a well-to-wheel basis, asking if natural gas and hydrogen should be part of the solution. “These are complex equations,” he said. “We can’t have moving targets and we need time to deliver the targets while ensuring reliability and competitive cost for our customers.”

MAN is part of the Traton group, VW’s commercial vehicle division that also includes Scania, and is working closely with its parent to develop new electro-mobility technologies including more efficient batteries.

Infrastructure

Hemmerich echoed previous calls from truck makers for legislators to ensure refuelling infrastructure kept pace with their demands to decarbonise road freight transport.

MAN is also looking to learn from its North American partner Navistar on how to exploit the increasing digitisation of heavy trucks. “We have just scratched the surface here when it comes to optimising the total cost of ownership,” Hemmerich said. “For truck manufacturing and sales organisations it will be a big change to move to selling solutions. It needs new technology and knowhow and MAN has made a major investment in this area. It will be a game changer and MAN is determined to stay ahead of the curve.”

While remaining sceptical about the prospects of fully autonomous driverless trucks on Europe’s roads any time soon, Hemmerich said that developments to automate trucks would yield “big gains for efficiency long before we take the driver out of the equation”.

MAN is equally sceptical about platooning but believes that developments such as adaptive cruise control and communications links between trucks could make better use of road space by allowing trucks to follow each other more closely than if a human driver was in complete control.

Forward buying

Turning to Brexit, Hemmerich confirmed that MAN Truck and Bus UK had taken the risk of raising finance to forward buy 1,000 trucks from its parent to avoid a potential 20% import duty if the UK had crashed out of the EU with no deal on March 29. Despite the delay in Brexit he insisted this move had paid off, with 70% of those trucks already sold as the UK market enjoyed a “very strong” start to 2019.

Hemmerich then introduced Goran Nyberg, who has recently joined the MAN executive board in Munich as sales and marketing director after 12 years with Volvo Trucks in the UK and USA.

Nyberg echoed Hemmerich’s call for the government to ensure infrastructure could keep pace with its ambitions to cut carbon emissions from road freight transport. “If we all switch to electric vehicles the power grid could not cope,” he said. “With clear direction and enough lead time we can adapt but we need a complete solution – MAN is not an energy provider.

“Legislators need to take a broader approach – today it is all vehicle, vehicle, vehicle.”

Certainty

He added that vehicle manufacturers needed certainty on what will be required from the 33 UK cities tasked with improving air quality. “No one knows what the future looks like,” he said. “Every city has got a new idea. We need to know what is required.”

On digitisation, Nyberg said North America was ahead in areas like using telematics to diagnose faults and remote downloads of software updates for trucks. “Mobile phones already automatically download and install software updates and that technology is available for trucks,” he said. “If you can park in a truck stop and get a software update that is a massive advantage and that will come in Europe.”

Sinotruk JV

Looking east rather than west, MAN is re-evaluating its joint venture with Chinese truck builder Sinotruk, which started in 2006.

“When we started 10 years ago, for the emerging markets in Asia, we enabled them with our engine technology up to Euro-5, and established a sales office in Singapore for Sinotruk products,” said Hemmerich. “That was working nicely but markets are moving so fast we need to reconsider our approach. Within Traton, Hino is now an integral part, so we need to get the balance in Asia-Pacific right.

"As well as Sinotruck and Hino, we see the MAN product as very suitable for mining operations, and it is highly appreciated in Indonesia, India and Australia. There is huge potential for MAN.”

Turning to developments in connectivity, MAN is already collecting data from over 100,000 trucks on the roads of Europe, and Nyberg said this was already helping improve reliability and productivity.

“That is good for MAN but the huge benefit for the customer is yet to come,” he said. “When we can remotely download software and change parameters to proactively govern the equipment that is when we can really bring customer value.”

Remote diagnostics

In the UK, MAN already uses Microlise telematics technology for its MANǀCheck diagnostics package that enables remote download of a truck’s fault codes.

“Before a truck pulls in for a service we read all the data so all the spare parts can be ordered,” said Hemmerich. “We have a preventative maintenance programme that works well. We have a dedicated team in Swindon [MAN UK HQ] that carries out a daily health check on a couple of pilot fleets. So we can call the customer and say ‘you have a misfire on cylinder five, please call in at the next dealership’. We have saved a couple of engines like this.”

Expanding on autonomous trucks, Nyberg said there would not be a fully autonomous vehicle until it could connect to other vehicles. “If you can read data from other vehicles then it could work,” he said.

“Every step of the journey towards that will bring benefits.” But he agreed that Level 4 semi-autonomous trucks where the driver can temporarily hand over control to the vehicle technology could be a dangerous phase.

“When the driver can take his hands and feet away from the controls, the reaction time goes up if he has to intervene,” Nyberg said. “That is a sensitive level of autonomy.”

Go to jail

Hemmerich added that the issue of legal liability for autonomous trucks was lagging behind the technology. “In principle the trucks can be driven fully autonomously but from a legal point of view all the parties need to be aligned,” he said. “If there is an accident who is liable – the producer, the driver or a third party? As an MD I am not willing to bring a full autonomous truck on the roads as long as I don’t know who is liable. I don’t want to go to jail!”

Some US states are already allowing trials of autonomous vehicles but the US national government is as unsure as European administrations.

“The US from a legislative point of view is 50 countries,” said Nyberg. “At the moment the US is moving a bit faster but it will be a long time before you have a coast to coast solution. But Silicon Valley has invested a lot of capital in future technologies and there is a big focus on transport because any industry where you can see waste that could be reduced with technology is of interest.”

Asked how MAN would avoid the swingeing fines proposed by the European Commission for truck manufacturers that fail to meet the CO2 reduction targets, Nyberg acknowledged that more had to be done to convince operators to invest in alternative fuelled trucks.

“We have huge penalties if we do not meet the legislation requiring us to sell a certain percentage of zero emissions vehicles,” he said. “Those vehicles will not be sold if the TCO is not comparable with existing technology. As long as we allow a diesel to be run alongside an electric truck then the TCO will decide what the customer will buy. Just saying we need to sell x amount of electric vehicles will not solve the problem.

“It isn’t just the first investment in the vehicle. An important part of the TCO is the second life and we may have to take a more active role there.”

Amazing fuel performance

MAN is looking to improve the fuel efficiency of its diesel trucks as well as developing its ranges of electric and hybrid drivelines. “We are now looking at the move from Euro-6c to Euro-6d and you will see some amazing fuel performance data coming out with the new products,” he said.

Getting the best from battery vehicles will also require more intelligence in the power management systems. “How you govern the batteries and utilise the power most efficiently could be a differentiator,” Nyberg said.

MAN’s sister OEM Scania is pursuing natural gas as an intermediate reduced carbon technology but Nyberg questions its green credentials.

“On a well to wheel measurement is natural gas going to be part of the equation?” he asked. “We as a manufacturer need to have this clarified. We can do all of it but we need clear rules on how energy sources are going to be qualified.

“As a group we have an aligned road map on development. Traton is still a young constellation and we have just started that journey of research and development. In some areas we will have unique solutions and where it makes sense we may have shared solutions. I cannot say whether we will see a Scania gas engine in an MAN truck but we can always speculate. If it makes sense, then yes.”