Low-tech cars in a high-tech world – Truck Tech

Back in April, HDT Editor-in-Chief Deborah Lockridge and I spent a day touring an Autocar manufacturing plant in Birmingham, Alabama. The plant itself is thrown back a little. It was a mix of both mass production with a hand-crafted touch thrown in to ensure highly customized trucks to exact customer specifications.

Autocar engineers told me that modern, high-speed, automated production lines were building products that simply couldn’t be delivered. In their view, attention to detail is the only way to ensure their fleet customers get the trucks they need to get their jobs done.

As confusing as the technological changes that are accelerating in trucking today, it makes me wonder what the future holds for professional trucks.

“Super Spec’ing” professional cars

First, let’s note that the ability to customize the truck down to the Nth detail is currently mostly a North American issue. It makes sense that North American ships have to contend with a wide range of climates, terrains and applications. It doesn’t hurt that offering such a service to what is still the world’s largest truck market makes sense for OEMs from a customer relations perspective.

That “Super-Spec” model is mostly gone in Europe and Asia. Buying a truck in those countries is similar to buying a passenger car here: you can play around with a few details. But in general, you should take what the manufacturer offers.

A big reason for limiting specifications is that OEMs can control costs and streamline production globally and regionally. That’s become increasingly difficult for manufacturers over the past two decades — and that’s especially true of human-driven, diesel-powered trucks.

So, I wonder, what happens when you introduce them suddenly. a lot of Alternative fuel/power generation supplies into the equation? And then, what will happen if mass-produced autonomous cars begin with little or no human drivers? My point is, product and component integration is critical to global cost control and scale production. What’s more, the fewer parts and specifications a manufacturer has to deal with, the easier it is to customize trucks to the exact specifications.

The easiest way to do this is with modular vehicle designs. Basically, they share as many parts as possible – like cabs, chassis and engines – across as many different makes and models as possible. OEMs have been doing this successfully for years.

Will they be able to keep up in the near future with many different powertrains, fuels, engines and varying degrees of automation entering the production chain?

My guess is yes – to a large extent. But, on the other hand, this plethora of new systems, parts and technologies creates many new headaches for engineers and workers who build trucks on assembly lines.

Autonomous cars on the assembly line?

While this remains to be seen, if autonomous long-haul trucks are as big a hit as some industry analysts (myself included) predict – I’m not sure it makes sense to build them from a productivity and cost control perspective. An autonomous or human-controlled vehicle. Because I think the benefits of completely removing all human ergonomic features from autonomous cars is that it’s important to develop different vehicles – perhaps based on a common chassis and with some common components.

The reality is that human-driven trucks and autonomous cars are so different in specifications, parts and construction requirements that it may not make sense for them to be built on the same assembly line. And even if you do, can you customize and spec trucks to the extent that most North American professional customers still want them?

For example, if you are a large OEM that is now beginning to research, develop, and eventually build battery-electric vehicles, hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles, alternative fuel vehicles, and autonomous vehicles based on diesel engines, are you? Are you looking to invest the time, money, and dollars into building a standard mid-range gas or diesel engine for professional applications? Do you want to offer those professional vehicles with different options available to customers?

Probably not. But you still want to offer these types of trucks and engines to your customers.

So, what to do?

A solution for many detailed options

One option Daimler recently announced is to outsource engine production to a third-party supplier. Cummins, in this case. And it’s worth noting that Cummins is laying the groundwork to serve effectively in this role, offering multiple powertrain options—standard and trim—to OEMs’ rapidly expanding lineup of production, powertrain, and production needs.

Many new startups – mostly in the BEV space – seem to be seeing the potential for some kind of product shake-up in the profession by offering new vehicles. I noticed, many of these vehicles are below class 7 in size.

Those vehicles, I suspect, are more likely to be dropped by OEMs, suddenly faced with the pressure to reduce assembly line production, parts and manufacturing costs and as many details as possible from the entire process.

This will be a great opportunity for automakers who moved away from professional trucking in the early 2000s – to get back into the trucking game. They may do so in light of the dire outlook for autonomous future passenger car sales, given the emphasis on moving cargo as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible in that future world.

In other words, if more than one automotive futurist is right, the manufacturing model will completely reverse what we’ve known for over a century: the money will be in the truck. Not cars.

To bring this little thought experiment full circle, I make one final observation. A very unique, detailed and specialized manufacturer like Autocar is in that strange new world, even when producing very special vehicles with alt-fuel or BEV powertrains (Autocar Technologies is already doing that).

No matter what happens on the technology front, the need for tough, specialized trucks that can handle human drivers and work crews won’t go away for long. I think new opportunities to serve those markets and customers could be the start of a technology revolution in trucking.