The hottest topic in the commercial vehicle industry is the domestic production of European heavy trucks in China. The major brands have entered the sprint stage from the start, and the one who can take the lead in entering the market can seize the initiative.

Recently, in the latest 354th batch announcement of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Domestic Mercedes-benz New Actros model of Beijing Foton Daimler Automobile Co., LTD appeared. This is a milestone event, which means that the domestic Mercedes-benz heavy truck officially enters the countdown and will be put into the market in some time in 2022. According to the announcement, someone from the appearance, engine brand, engine parameters and other aspects of understanding, and triggered a hot discussion on the engine configuration.

First of all, let’s be clear: it’s a complete misreading that a domestic Mercedes-benz truck is a Foton Cummins engine. According to information previously released by Daimler Trucks, domestic Mercedes-Benz will adopt the latest mercedes-benz power + Cummins engine dual power chain strategy, while also providing more flexible power chain options according to user needs. This announcement is only a power choice of domestic Mercedes Benz, and there will be follow-up products with Mercedes Benz power announced.

Second, in the era of “software-defined heavy truck”, it is not comprehensive to interpret and evaluate a model only from the hardware and may even mislead the market.

Commercial vehicles are an international industry. It is an inevitable trend to “buy parts and sell whole vehicles globally”. The core competitiveness of products is no longer hardware, but software. This software includes design standards, verification standards, software calibration technology, production process, quality control system, service system and so on. Hardware can be bought with money, and we can proudly say that many of the new car manufacturing plants in China now have more advanced hardware than those in Europe and North America. However, software needs to be accumulated for several decades, which is the core competitiveness of an enterprise and cannot be bought with money. Moreover, foreign enterprises will not sell it, and even if domestic enterprises buy it, they cannot use it quickly in a short period of time.

The biggest concern is that these two domestic Mercedes heavy truck engines are not Benz OM series, but Fukuda Cummins X12 series engine, the displacement of 11.8L, the power of 410 horsepower, 440 horsepower and 470 horsepower. It is reported that fukuda Cummins X12 series engine has been applied in a number of domestic heavy truck matching, and its power has reached 510 horsepower. In contrast, domestic Benz heavy card competitive advantage in what?

At present, domestic Benz heavy truck is not simply the European Benz NEW Actros model into China production, but based on China’s actual road conditions and customer use scenarios for a NEW development, the power assembly for China road spectrum calibration, can meet the needs of customers on the basis of power to achieve the best economy. Generally speaking, the dynamic and economic performance is a pair of contradictions, in the calibration of too prominent vehicle dynamic performance, fuel consumption will increase; Power and reliability, durability is also a contradiction, the same parts bearing capacity after the improvement, its service life may be reduced, so the European heavy truck engine with the same displacement, its calibrated power is generally slightly lower than the domestic heavy truck, this is the principle of “big horse small car”.

Foton Daimler has set up a project team for domestic Mercedes-benz heavy truck. Based on years of practice and huge investment in road spectrum collection for many typical domestic main roads, in-depth research on various customer usage scenarios, iterative analysis of the collected road spectrum is conducted to form the input conditions for design and verification. Taking the development of the driver’s seat as an example, the collected road spectrum is input to the six-degree-of-freedom shaking table to simulate the actual use of road conditions for testing, and ultimately ensure that the seat’s comfort, reliability, durability, safety and other comprehensive performance indicators. In contrast, many heavy truck companies usually only do vertical up and down vibration tests. Therefore, the same parts brand, due to the different input standards of commercial vehicle enterprises, the quality and quality of its products are completely different.

In terms of powertrain calibration, Foton Daimler procured engine hardware from Foton Cummins, calibrated the powertrain according to customers’ actual use scenarios and road spectrum data, and adopted different fuel-saving strategies according to different road conditions. Even with the calibration data of 410 HP, it can easily meet the requirements of the use scenario of pingyuan high-speed express logistics. If the vehicle speed limit is 89km/h, the driving power is only 280-320 HP. Due to the limited maximum power, which can prevent engine damage caused by overload, the B10 can reach 1.8 million km. At the same time, domestic Benz heavy truck engine, gearbox, rear axle are all new calibration, and through the vehicle controller of Mercedes Benz program control, can achieve a number of intelligent functions to reduce fuel consumption. Foton Daimler spent a lot of money to establish a perfect verification center in 2015, including the vehicle bench, which can collect road spectrum input to the computer, the reliability and durability of the vehicle can be verified on the bench, and this way of test consistency is higher.

In addition, in terms of comfort, domestic Benz heavy truck can be equipped with parking air conditioning, according to the announcement of the front photo can be seen: in the front mask rear added two electric fans. At present, although many domestic heavy trucks are matched with parking air conditioning, most of them are installed on the roof of the cab. Parking air conditioning and driving air conditioning are two sets of systems with simple structure but low technical content. The parking air conditioning on the roof will also increase wind resistance. The technical route of domestic Benz heavy truck matching parking air conditioning is to share air conditioning condenser (external radiator) and air duct. The specific principle is as follows: After the vehicle engine is shut down, the large-capacity battery is used to drive another independent compressor, and the refrigerant pipeline is switched. The air-conditioning condenser in front of the engine is still used, but the heat dissipation mode is changed from the head wind heat dissipation in driving to the blowing heat dissipation of two electric fans. The biggest advantage of parking air conditioning is high degree of integration, light weight, no increase in wind resistance.

According to the above analysis, the announcement of the domestic Benz heavy truck type is developed according to the actual working conditions and customer use scenarios in China, and the driving form is the mainstream 6×4 in China. In contrast, the main European models are 4×2 and 6×2R, and few imported models are 6×4 models sold in Korea.

To sum up, after entering the era of “software-defined heavy truck”, we should not only evaluate the domestic Benz heavy truck by the appearance, parts and other hardware, but also see the R&D system, production system and service system represented by the Mercedes-benz LOGO, which is the core competitiveness of domestic Benz heavy truck. This is because in the definition of Mercedes Benz brand, there is no distinction between Benz heavy truck made in Germany and Benz heavy truck made in China. As long as the LOGO of Benz heavy truck is hung, its brand is the same. According to the dual-power chain strategy announced by Mercedes Benz earlier, domestic models equipped with Mercedes Benz power will be announced next. Let’s wait for the wonderful appearance of more domestic Mercedes heavy trucks!