Although transport truck drivers routinely shift gears when going up or down hills, those hills can sometimes sneak up on them.
Using Daimler’s GPS-enabled Predictive Power Control, however, the new Mercedes-Benz Actros truck will now be able to see those hills coming.
This will allow it to automatically change gears before the going gets tough, resulting in fuel savings of up to three percent over moderately difficult topography.
In 2009, Daimler introduced a system known as Predictive Cruise Control, on its Freightliner trucks in the US.
This uses GPS data to control the vehicle’s speed and braking functions for maximum efficiency, given its present geographical location.
Predictive Power Control is built on this system, but uses its knowledge of the road ahead to also pre-emptively downshift the Actros by one or two gears.
According to Daimler, the system’s performance “could only be matched by an extremely motivated truck driver with an exceptional level of concentration.”
As the first GPS-based cruise control system, Predictive Powertrain Control not only intervenes to control speed and braking, but can now also regulate the transmission.
The system thus extends use of the fuel-saving EcoRoll function, which is fitted as standard on the Actros, and will furthermore insert a carefully judged single or double downshift of gear at an early stage, where appropriate.
The new development from Mercedes-Benz builds on this basis, using its knowledge of the road ahead when driving up or downhill.
In doing so, Predictive Powertrain Control turns the classic and inherent disadvantage of a non-regulated cruise control system into clearly measurable advantages: fully laden long-distance haulage trucks such as the new Actros 1845 BlueTec 6 can achieve fuel savings of around three percent in long-distance operations over moderately difficult topography compared with “non-regulated” examples fitted with a classic cruise control system.
Predictive Powertrain Control is representative of a new type of technology that brings together the technology that is already in the vehicle with external data from its surroundings.
