The Detroit Assurance advanced safety system will be available on Detroit-powered Freightliner Cascadias beginning in March 2015.Daimler Trucks North America announced its intentions to launch two medium-duty engines — the DD5 and DD8 — beginning in 2016. The announcement came during a press roundtable at the 2014 American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition in San Diego.
“We have the confidence that we can offer our customers another great choice in addition to the Cummins engines,” said Martin Daum, DTNA president and CEO. “We want to have nothing but the best medium-duty engines in this market and give the best solution for our customers and increase the choices available.”
Detroit’s new DD5 and DD8 engines are part of Daimler Trucks’ Global Excellence Strategy to have uniform production standards and processes worldwide. The engines, which will be tailored in terms of horsepower ratings and specs specifically for the North American market, will initially be supplied from Daimler’s engine plant in Mannheim, Germany, before production moves to the United States as early as 2018.
The medium-duty DD5 and DD8 will join Detroit’s heavy-duty DD13, DD15 and DD16 engines, providing DTNA the ability to offer proprietary engines to customers across its entire truck model line, including Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses and Freightliner Custom Chassis vehicles.
DTNA executives also discussed new Detroit Assurance safety enhancements coming to the Cascadia, including a new radar system and lane departure warning system.
The radar system will include adaptive cruise control, allowing fleet operators to automatically slow the truck down when it comes within a preset distance from another vehicle, as well as active braking assist that will alert the driver of slow or stopped traffic and even bring the truck to a full stop automatically to avoid a rear-end collision if the driver does not interact. The lane departure warning system is powered by a series of cameras and communicates to the driver when he goes out-of-lane.
“Safety systems are critical to the future needs of society,” said Richard Howard, DTNA’s senior vice president of sales & marketing. “In terms of the evolution of our trucks, this is another step in that journey. Safety systems are the next step and there is more to come.”
The integrated safety systems will be available on all Detroit-powered Freightliner Cascadia models beginning in March 2015.
