In the major design changes needed to create the 2023 Truck of the Year Australasia, an important aspect was including a global platform in the K220 from Kenworth.
“Our trademark over the years has been about what we do in Australia and it’s all about Australia, but the reality is the trucks are getting more capable, but with that capability comes more complexity and how we interact with global suppliers and the resources and investment to do that is large,” says Brad May, Paccar Australia Chief Engineer. “As an engineering function we walk hand in hand with both Paccar in North America and DAF in Europe. From a global perspective, Paccar is focused on doing things right, investing in the right way, and not having its different divisions pulling in different directions.
“We are very proud of what we do here as far as creating configurations and specifics that relate to the trucks for this market. We’re equally proud to say that we are very much keyed into a major global player, and that brings benefits.”
Paccar, as a whole, has a core electronic architecture, which has been developed globally. Paccar, in Australia, goes through a process of adaptation for the needs of the market here. The basic architecture is very similar in a Kenworth in the US and the DAF in Europe.
“For example, the active steps on our K220, we rolled the functionality required to control that into the electrical architecture rather than having a standalone separate module,” says Ross Cureton, Director of Product Planning – PACCAR Australia. “That’s something that doesn’t feature on any Paccar product anywhere in the world.
“Software particularly is not something you do in a bubble in Australia. It’s always connected to Paccar US or to DAF, or to Cummins or other major supplier teams. When I started leading projects here, an electrical system was probably 20 per cent of the project. Now it’s verging on 70 or more per cent.
“You can pile a bunch of tech into a truck, but it has to be what the customer needs and values to do their job. You can put the foundation electrical architecture, but that doesn’t mean you just pile every toy and trinket you can think of into the truck and that’s where we spend a lot of time thinking and considering those things very closely.”
It’s clear from the Kenworth product the company does not use gadgets as a marketing lever. New features and functionality are incorporated if they really help people do their job. As the truck industry evolves we see systems moving from being a luxury or a curiosity to being an imperative. One of the aspects of architecture may be something no-one is asking for at the beginning. However, in a few years’ time the function becomes something truck customers begin to ask for.
One example of this is the digital dash, which is in the K220. The driver or operator can choose to have the traditional dials and instrumentation on that screen, which was previously shown on the analogue version. However, it has the capability to display contextual information, which can’t be shown in an analogue way, which the operator may decide they need in five years’ time.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean to say you should,” says Brad. “You have to think about what problem you’re solving and what opportunity are you creating. Looking at the Australian market, at things like driver availability and the need to help them improve their performance, it’s been a great asset if you can have a driver interface that helps customers deal with that.”
The real meat of the design process took place during the long hard shutdowns that Melbourne suffered during the pandemic. Engineers used to rubbing shoulders each day and bouncing ideas around the office had to try and replicate that teamwork via online discussions with just a computer screen to talk to.
Luckily the teams have been working together for years and the relationships with the vital component suppliers are also long term. This enabled the collaborative environment needed in a situation like this to develop on the K220 project.
“Some of the things we found in our discussions with customers sharpened our focus, so when we talk about the new cab suspension we’ve developed for the truck, that was something that evolved during the development of the truck,” says Ross. “So we included it and it’s locally manufactured and designed by us to suit our roads and our requirements, with input from customers and tested by us as well.”
That cab suspension is in a ‘controlled’ release at the moment, in certain applications. It’s getting some experience in the real world.
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