Shifting opinions - Scania’s Opticruise
Scania’s Opticruise automated gear-shifting system dates back all of 20 years and has evolved hugely. UK tipper operators appear uniquely resistant to its charms but Scania believes that it can persuade them.
Scania has led the UK’s 8-wheeler sector for the past four years, with a market share of very nearly 30%. One could deduce that Scania is clearly giving the UK tipper market what it demands. But there is one anomaly among the statistics. Its UK tipper customers are reluctant to move away from manual gearboxes in favour of Scania’s automated Opticruise transmissions.
The tipper sector was stubbornly resistant to automated shifting for many years, but much of that reluctance has disappeared by now. Accordingly, some truck manufacturers, such as Mercedes-Benz with the Arocs and Renault Trucks with the Range C, have made automated gearboxes part of their 8x4 standard default specifications. Others may still have a manual box in the base specification but report strong and growing take-up of automated boxes. More than 90% of Volvo’s new 8x4 tippers in the UK now have I-Shift, for example.
But take-up of Opticruise among Scania’s UK 8x4 customers is sluggish, compared not only with automated shifting in other marques, but also with Scania’s tipper customers in other countries. The accompanying chart shows that Opticruise is the majority choice for Scania 8x4 construction trucks in Sweden, Germany and France – but not in the UK. Even the latest data, covering UK order intake for 2015 production, shows Opticruise penetration of just 22% for Scania’s 8x4 construction chassis. So it’s on the up, but still comparatively meagre.
We asked Scania GB why it struggles to convince UK tipper operators of the merits of automated shifting. Perhaps they are deterred by the £2,420 option list price for two-pedal Opticruise, including Scania Active Prediction (SAP), the GPS-enabled cruise control function?
Martin Hay, Scania’s UK truck sales director, says: “The relatively low take-up of Opticruise by UK tipper operators compared with their European counterparts appears to be due to Scania’s manual gearbox being a tried, tested and proven option. Operators not only know they will get great service and performance from the manual box, but that it is widely accepted in the secondary market too – which overcomes any concerns of technology adversely affecting residuals in the traditionally conservative used vehicle sector.”
Opticruise for tippers
Scania reckons Opticruise is well-suited to tipper operations and capable in off-road conditions, citing the high level of Opticruise uptake in the construction section in other countries. Sophisticated management of clutch engagement is reckoned to prolong clutch life and reduce gearbox stress loadings. Shifts are faster than with a manual box, so traction interruptions are shorter. Automation obviously makes life easier for drivers and if they can forget gear-shifting in busy urban streets this surely addresses the highly topical issue of cycle safety.
Scania’s standard manual box has eight gears (plus a crawler), whereas the Opticruise alternative has 12 (plus two crawlers). The combination of additional ratios and strict control of engine speed and shift strategy is the perfect recipe for optimal fuel consumption on a tipper, argues Scania.
Opticruise was introduced in 1995, pre-dating ZF’s AS-Tronic by a couple of years and Volvo’s I-Shift by six years. But while they abandoned the clutch pedal from the outset, Scania was unwilling to do this and it wasn’t until 2009 that two-pedal Opticruise arrived. Since then, its control strategies have been constantly evolving, adding refinements and new functions. The company makes much of its in-house transmission and software ability, recognised by last year’s decision by its Volkswagen parent group to give Scania responsibility for heavy truck gearbox supply at sister company MAN as of 2016.
Opticruise differs from rival automated boxes such as AS-Tronic, I-Shift and Mercedes’ PowerShift in that it is still based on a conventional manual gearbox and so retains synchroniser cones for the three main gears. The other boxes are non-synchro designs using electronic speed matching of the gears. And Opticruise’s automatic clutch uses electro-hydraulic actuation whereas the others are electro-pneumatic. Scania claims both these characteristics aid shift quality and smoothness in off-road conditions, so should be especially appealing to tipper operators. The synchronisers are also reckoned to make it easier – and impose less stress on the gearbox – when down-shifting for engine braking on a steep downhill gradient.
Manoeuvring mode, introduced with two-pedal Opticruise in 2009, modifies the action of clutch engagement for more precise control when making small, low-speed movements. Manoeuvring was a weak point with early automated systems: we can testify that this is no longer the case with Opticruise. Some tipper operators fear that wheelspin in slippery off-road conditions can fool automated gearboxes into making unwanted upshifts. Opticruise overcomes that by sensing the speed of the front wheels.
Economy or power?
Two important additions were made to Opticruise in spring 2013. First, Scania Active Prediction (SAP), the GPS-enabled cruise control function, was integrated into Opticruise, rather than offered separately. Second, Scania added a new economy mode for Opticruise, joining the three other modes already available – standard, power and off-road. Each truck can be specified when new with three of the four modes; the driver can toggle between them using a switch on the steering column’s right-hand stalk.
When introducing economy mode, even Scania described it as “tuned for maximum fuel-saving in long-distance haulage”. Surely, it is of little relevance to an 8x4 tipper, for which the obvious trio of Opticruise modes are standard, power and off-road? Mikael Wågberg, a Scania development engineer who worked on powertrain control systems, suggests tipper operators should consider sacrificing power mode and choosing economy mode instead. “Power and off-road modes are very similar,” he points out. Both allow engine speed to rise higher than the torque-focused standard mode when making gear-shifts, using more power and reducing the number of shifts. Shifts are also faster in both modes, either to speed progress or to minimise loss of traction.
Economy mode differs from standard mode in several respects. Kickdown is automatically disabled and a lower speed limiter setting can be activated automatically when switching to economy mode. Hill-climbing strategy also changes. In standard mode and cruise control, the truck may accelerate before a hill climb if it calculates that this would cut the number of downshifts needed on the climb. When using economy mode and cruise control there is never a speed increase before a hill, on the basis that it is marginally more economical to avoid this, at the expense of some lost time.
In standard and economy modes cruise control comes off the throttle before a downhill gradient, so that the vehicle starts coasting and loses speed before the hill. The speed loss is up to 6% below the cruise control’s set speed in standard mode, but as much as 12% below in economy mode – a bone of contention among some drivers who feel progress can become annoyingly slow.
The usual system of load bonuses in the tipper business is not conducive to economy mode’s gentle, more relaxed approach. Scania carried out some market research across Europe in 2012 and found that payment methods geared to productivity are not necessarily prevalent in every country’s construction sector. For example, Scania found that while 52% of Turkish tipper operators are paid by the tonne/km, only 29% of German tipper operators earn their revenue by this measure. The dominant (43%) payment scheme in Germany is a simple hourly rate.
Scania tipper owners with Opticruise who want to test Wågberg’s advice by evaluating the effect of economy mode instead of power mode can visit their dealer for the software modification.
Smart eco-roll
Scania previously shunned eco-roll, maintaining that it was safer to coast downhill with the drivetrain engaged rather than roll downhill in neutral with the engine idling.
But its trucks built from early 2014 and equipped with Opticruise with integrated SAP have eco-roll too. Says Wågberg: “We do not automatically disengage the drivetrain going down every hill.” He explains that when the truck is coasting downhill in gear, fuelling is cut off completely, but you still have driveline drag. On the other hand, using eco-roll eliminates the drag but the engine has to be fuelled to keep it idling. “Fuel consumption at idle is 1.5 to 2.0 litres an hour,” says Wågberg. “So the control system looks at the difference between the parasitic driveline drag losses and the fuel used with eco-roll, and calculates which approach uses less fuel.”
This explains why eco-roll needs SAP’s forward knowledge of the topography ahead, allowing it to calculate whether or not to engage eco-roll. As a rule of thumb, when introduced early last year, it meant eco-roll was activated only if the truck would roll for at least 10 seconds. Equally, it would not be used if SAP calculated that eco-roll allowed the truck to gather so much speed that the gears would have to be re-engaged to provide some engine braking. Scania estimated that eco-roll could generate fuel savings of up to 2% in hilly terrain.
Since then, Scania has refined that strategy to squeeze out more fuel savings. “The system has been made a little more intelligent, allowing eco-roll to be used more often,” said the company last September, claiming the new approach should boost fuel economy by a further 0.5%.
Another important Opticruise development in early 2014 was to make much greater use of SAP’s knowledge of the topography ahead. Until then, this advance information about gradients was used to modify gear-shift points only when cruise control was engaged. But then Scania improved system functionality so that Opticruise uses terrain-sensitive shifting all the time, not just in cruise control.
What Wågberg describes as “major improvements” followed in March this year, modifying the way Opticruise applies its topography knowledge.
Similarly, since March this year, the eco-roll function has also been extended so that it works all the time, not just in cruise control. Bearing in mind that opportunities to use cruise control on busy UK roads might be limited, availability of eco-roll when driving on the accelerator is a big plus.
Brendan Mitchell is among the minority of Scania’s UK customers specifying Opticruise in tippers. His company, BP Mitchell of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, runs a 75-strong fleet that, with the exception of a lone Daf skip-loader, is 100% Scania. The majority are 8x4 P-series tippers, supplemented by mixers, grabs and a handful of tractor units. The company operates in the northern Home Counties and into north London, serving a variety of sectors including site clearance, aggregates, ready-mix concrete and plant hire.
“Our first Opticruise gearboxes were three-pedal ones on some 11-plate tractor units,” recalls Mitchell. “On the 8x4s we went from the eight-speed manual over to two-pedal Opticruise in September 2013.”
According to Mitchell’s transport manager Richard Tassell, (pictured), most drivers initially were unenthusiastic about the prospect of Opticruise. “They asked me, why are we getting automatics?” recalls Tassell. “They didn’t really want them. But they changed their mind within a couple of weeks. After that, they all wanted automatics.”
“Touch wood, we’ve had no problems with the Opticruise gearboxes at all,” reports Mitchell. Fuel consumption has improved but he says it is impossible to isolate the exact benefit because engine power ratings have risen too: the last manual 8x4s were P360s but the two-pedal Opticruise boxes for the 8x4s in 2013 were in P400s. “I suspect some of the improvement has come from the engine,” says Mitchell, “but I’m sure the automatic gearbox and the extra ratios have helped.”
Fears about the off-road performance of Opticruise gearboxes are unwarranted in Mitchell’s opinion. “You can always drive them like a manual, using the stalk on the column, if you want,” he points out.
BP Mitchell appears to like doing things differently, and not just when it comes to choice of gearbox. After years of dealing with the mainstream UK bodybuilders, the company now sources its aluminium tipper bodies in kit form from Canada, assembling them in its own workshop and installing QuickSilver body liners. “It’s like a flat-pack. We build them up and get them type approved under IVA [individual vehicle approval] as Mitchell bodies,” says Tassell.
Similarly, BP Mitchell chooses underfloor tipping gear – Edbro’s TS – rather than the more common front-end option. Tassell gives a one-word answer when asked why: “stability”.
The company has a big, bold fleet replacement policy. Nearly 30% of the fleet was renewed in September 2013 with the arrival of the 20 new P400s. That has been followed this March with 30 Euro-6 Scania 8x4s, updating and expanding the fleet.
And whereas around 400hp is currently the most common power rating for new 8x4 tippers – Scania’s top-selling Euro-6 last year was the P410 – Mitchell has gone one better by choosing the P450 at Euro-6. Richard Tassell hopes that the combination of Opticruise and the new engine rating will deliver fuel consumption of around 1mpg better than the older manual P360s.
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By David Wilcox
MAN Truck & Bus UK sees dramatic growth of remanufactured parts scheme
MAN Truck & Bus UK has revealed it is offering more than 15 times as many parts in its remanufactured parts scheme compared with two years ago.
The manufacturer said when its Ecoline scheme began in 2014, only 200 different parts were offered but that this figure has now grown to 3,500.
Ecoline parts are made from genuine MAN parts which have undergone professional reconditioning.
The remanufactured parts cost about 50 per cent less than a brand new one and come with a full 12-month warranty.
These remanufactured parts go through various stages including systematic dismantling, intensive cleaning and mechanical processing with all wearing parts replaced, regardless of their condition.
The parts are then reassembled before receiving a final detailed inspection.
Simon Elliott, MD of MAN Truck & Bus UK said Ecoline is aimed primarily at older vehicles, mainly between four and 10-years old.
He added: “We are basically turning old parts into new by giving a damaged component the chance of a second life.
“When there is a parts failure, many people believe the only option is to get it repaired or just replace it with a brand new component.
“However, we felt it was important to provide a third offering, with remanufactured parts that you do not have to wait for.”