Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025

Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025

Not so long ago, in 2014, Daimler AG presented their vision of the truck of the future, and then the concept called Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025. And here, haven't yet been settled passion on this impressive concept truck, and Daimler AG new vision for the future? What has changed during this time? What are the principles of the new concept?

Our new concept "connectivity" of the modern truck to the public Internet network. This is a completely new vision of the whole industry of transportation. Today in Europe, more than ¾ of all cargo is transported by truck, and this number will only grow. According to the forecasts of our experts, in the nearest future the volume of Internet sales will grow, but all of these purchases need to deliver, and to cope with this task only commercial vehicles.

Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025

The majority of experts predicts a threefold increase in traffic volume by 2030. And the more serious the problem of efficient use of the fleet.

Today the truck in the best case it works and makes a profit only 35% of the time. The remaining is spent sitting in traffic jams, waiting for loading/unloading, customs clearance and compliance with the regime of work and rest hours. That is, the machine works only a third of the total time. We propose to maximally load the machine and reduce the cost of downtime drastically.

The main problem of modern transportation is the secrecy of information. Our concept assumes the maximum openness and availability of information.

Just imagine: a truck is included in the Internet and inform the surrounding vehicles about its location, mode of movement, even the curvature of the bend, the condition of the road surface and sudden obstacles. Thus, the movement becomes as safe as possible. This is the first step, we call it connection vehicle-to-vehicle or V2V (Vehicle to Vehicle).

The second step becomes the communication vehicle to infrastructure or V2I (Vehicle to Infrastructure). You don't need paper, you can see where the machine with your cargo, how it moves and even to communicate with freight forwarder in real time. You are no longer waiting for loading, auto advance sends electronic invoices to the warehouse, and you are told the exact time of download, you come to the warehouse and your order has already been formed – can only plunge. Same thing with customs: you do not spend time on paperwork, the vehicle itself in advance to send all documents to customs online.

Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025

Of course, the whole vast array of information is processed by the traffic control system, and the route is paved all vehicles to use the road network as efficiently as possible – this greatly reduces the risk of getting stuck in traffic. Thus, we can provide a threefold increase in traffic existing truck fleet.

It's really a completely new vision of the entire industry of trucking. But such ideas are occasionally voiced by most major manufacturers. Looks like the solution suggested by Daimler AG?

We offer system Highway Pilot Connect is a further development of the automated system of the Highway Pilot, is represented in the concept truck Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025. Today, the Highway Pilot system Connect allows you to assemble a convoy of three trucks and drive it on the highway in automatic mode. We are more than three times reduced the distance between the trains, and instead of 50 m, our convoy is moving at a distance of 15 m from each other. Thus, we more efficiently use the road network, because now instead of 150 m three trains quite 80 m!

In addition, the second and third car in the convoy, moving in a "wind bag", and it reduces overall fuel consumption by 7%. So achieved a hitherto unseen figures of fuel consumption in 0,66 l/100 km per ton and 40-ton truck consumes 25 l/100 km. If you try to recalculate this data for passenger car, you will realize that even they are not able to effectively drain the fuel. We don't have cars weighing 1.5 tons, which consumes 1l/100 km.

Impressive. But how does this work in practice? Or is it just a project?

Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025

This is a real transport solution. And we have the permission for trial operation of convoys of three trucks on Federal highways A-81 from lake Constance to würzburg and A-52 in the surroundings of düsseldorf, where you will have the opportunity to personally see how everything works*.

*Approx.auth. Looking ahead: we actually took a ride on these machines. Naturally, the wheel is let us no, but to sit in the passenger seat had a chance. For anyone who has ever driven a 40-ton road train is a spooky sight: the driver presses two buttons on the monitor lights up your position in the convoy, the distance to paradeigma machine is reduced to 15 m, and the driver at this time, folds his hands on his chest and removes his feet from the pedals. And all this against the maximum allowed in Germany 80 km/h!

The whole system is based on the flagship model in our line of long-haul tractors Mercedes Actros. In the lower part of the cabin (in the bumper) there are two radars that scan the space in front of the truck and fixing the speed and distance of a moving car. The first sensor scans the area at a distance of 250 m with the "angle" 18°, the second is responsible for "the dead zone" and scans the space 70 m with an angle of 130°. Both sensors have a very high accuracy of measurement, capturing the change of speed of 0.1 km/h and the distance with an accuracy of 0.2 m.

In addition, the windshield is a stereo camera, fixing a 100-meter area in front of the truck with an angle of 45 degrees horizontally and 27° vertically. The camera recognizes road markings, number of lanes and the availability of free space and is able to recognize traffic signs. In the field threshold of the door panels are sensors, scanning a 30-meter area on each side of the truck.