Capital Equipment News January 2018

COMMERCIAL VEHICLES

AMT is the most popular style of transmission in extra-heavy long- haul trucks in South Africa.

REITERATING THE APPEAL OF AUTOMATICS

QUICK TAKE

The advent of automatic and automated transmissions in extra heavy-duty commercial vehicles is taking centre stage

The advent of automatic and automated transmissions in heavy-duty commercial vehicles is taking centre stage. We have seen several new truck launches in recent years going the automatic route as the appeal of automatics goes far beyond driver preferences, with uptime, fuel consumption, safety and maintenance costs, among the major drivers of increased uptake, writes Munesu Shoko .

early concerns, through strong R&D regimes, have been rectified. For example, last year UD Trucks launched its Croner, an all-new heavy commercial vehicle, and one of the major talking points of the new truck range is its automatic transmission option. Gert Swanepoel, MD of UD Trucks Southern Africa, says the automatic transmission is a game changer for the truck industry as it helps lower operating costs and downtime, bearing in mind that the traditional manual transmission is more susceptible to wear- and-tear, especially to its clutch in the long run. Elsewhere, Hino also went the full auto- matic route for the first time with the launch of its 500 Series at Futuroad Expo 2017. Some variants of this range are available with a choice of either a six-speed Allison 3000 or 3500 Series automatic transmission.

A utomatic transmissions are nothing new; they have been around in au- tomotive applications in one form or the other since the 1940s. But adapting them for use in heavy-duty trucks proved to be difficult for a variety of reasons – not the least of which was the inability of mechanical engines and transmissions to “talk” to one another and ensure optimal vehicle performance across an array of applications, road conditions and cargo/ payload configurations. However, the recent arrival of several new truck ranges with automatic or automated transmissions is testimony that some of the

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS JANUARY 2018 12