Marketing new technologies often involves over-promising and under-delivering. Hype is the word, as Frankie Valli didn’t sing. Expectations of product launch dates, of performance, of cost, and of reliability can generally all be labeled as optimistic.
Many times, during the initial days of the SmartWay program, fleets I interviewed had been told that aerodynamic devices like trailer skirts, wheel covers, trailer gap devices, tractor roof fairings, etc., would achieve remarkable fuel economies. The fleets often found that, in the real world, these claims evaporated to one-third or less. Promises of 10% MPG gains became less than 3% in the harsh reality of actual trucks driving actual routes in real-world traffic.
Hype really deflates the credibility of manufacturer claims. Why do companies over-promise?
One key reason is that measuring MPG in the real world is hard. Analysis requires a lot of assumptions to reflect all the factors; many times, decisions are made to simplify assumptions to reduce the cost of an analysis or to speed it up to get quicker results. Controlled testing to determine whether a technology is doing anything useful often has to be simplified to the point that it no longer reflects reality. For example, track testing of a single vehicle often requires ambient wind conditions to be nearly zero, ambient temperatures to be somewhere near 68°F, and there to be no traffic. All those simplifications are needed to attain repeatable results, but they don’t reflect what the truck experiences on the road.
OEMs know the limitations of analysis and controlled track testing. Where the results are important, OEMs often do road testing in real-world conditions. They also frequently work with selected fleets to do pilot evaluations. Those on-road tests and fleet pilots provide better insights into the effectiveness of technologies, but they are still statistically small.
Another challenge in testing vehicles is that often more than one new technology is on a vehicle. Road testing can really only tell the net effects of all the vehicle changes. Simple things like differences in the tread depth of test vehicles can skew results. Differences in driver behavior or uncontrolled situations—like testing in Arizona during the summer with one driver having the window down and A/C off, and another having the window up and A/C on—can impact results.
Having a good baseline is also tough. Sure, one typical fleet truck would be great to use as a baseline. But which one of your fleet’s trucks is typical? Which of your drivers is average? Which route represents your typical route and load? How do you know? Most likely, your fleet has a mix of vehicle vintages, specifications, manufacturers, and drivers. It gets complicated. Every choice is a simplification that can skew and bias the results.
At times when testing, OEMs go to some extremes. One track testing and road testing effort I’m aware of tried to keep the same tires and wheels over years for comparison testing of vehicles. Even this had its challenges, as tires tend to age just from sitting around in storage.
One of the best uses of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is going to be as test vehicles for other technologies. AVs will help standardize testing on tracks and on the road. They will standardize the driver, taking that variable out of the equation for comparison testing. However, that testing will not reflect the real world with its human drivers.
Hype, unfortunately, also has some nefarious aspects. Test results can be intentionally skewed by unscrupulous manufacturers. The tricks of the trade are constantly being updated as new technologies come out. Outright lies also occur with seemingly little legal consequences.
Hype is not just limited to backyard inventors; major companies seem to thrive on it. Every false claim creates endless free social media coverage. The term for that is free advertising.
Companies developing technologies often have to deal with two masters: the customers and the investors. Those two groups do not generally share the same desires. Those differences can lead to over-promising to satisfy the investors and under-delivering to customers. It’s all a question of timing. Run the stock value up, sell it, and get out before reality sets in—often termed "pump-and-dump."
Hype is a disease. It is combated by challenging the misinformation at every turn, exposing falsehoods when they occur, and not letting manufacturers get away with controlling the narrative. Having hard data in your hands is critical.
Combating hype is also in the best interests of the manufacturers. One study showed that, oftentimes, manufacturers of new technologies overstate their effectiveness by as much as 10%. The parallel result is that customers grow to underestimate manufacturers’ claims by a similar 10%.
Credibility is important. When you as a manufacturer say something, do you want a fleet owner to instantly discount it as hype? That is the cost of misinformation: customers believe less and less of what manufacturers claim, leading to manufacturers needing to overstate their claims by more and more.
If you state your production launch date is X, and then in reality it is X+5 or X+10, what does that say about your credibility? When you promise a 10% MPG improvement but the fleets barely see 2%, what do fleet perceptions of your claims do to your future sales? When you state the reliability of your technology is 98+% but in actuality it is in the 70% range or worse, don’t you think fleets take notice?
There is value to being credible. The long-term health of a company depends on continued sales and fleets trusting what you say. It doesn’t take long for fleets to see for themselves.
Hype has a very limited shelf life.
