The effect of technology development on components machined in the current production system used by the OEMs in the truck industry

Abstract

The transport sector is growing and so is the awareness of the environmental impact from fossil fuels. This calls for changes in how road transport is powered, driven by both rules and regulations and from customer and societal expectations. There are several technical solutions to reduce and finally replace the use of fossil fuels currently discussed both in academia and industry and those solutions are at different maturity levels. The aim of this research is to investigate how the introduction of new technologies effects the evolvement of the components in the powertrain. This knowledge will be valuable for the truck industry OEMs to support the transition of the production system to match future needs. This is done in two parts. First, a semi-structured interview with experts from the automotive industry was conducted, then a literature study. The research shows that several powertrain technologies will exist, optimized for different markets and applications. On a component level, effort will be made to reduce the losses in the powertrain and the strive for efficiency will lead to higher requirements on geometrical quality, tighter tolerances, and surface requirements.