Powertrain | Diesel International 2022-11

EVENTS
#IVECO #BLUENERGYMOTORS #INDIA
IVECO GROUP DAYS
BEYOND
FPT'S
SOUL
LOOK WHO’S HERE
Sporting the Iveco brand, we had the fully electric Daily
and the 7.2 fuel-cell Daily prototype boasting an integrated
fuel cell system. The S-Way was indeed there in its Plus
Autonomous Driving version. Natural Gas, Amazon version,
was also present; it can run on 100% biomethane and it is
fitted with the Driver Pal system. The Alexa Voice Assistant
can be used for route planning, checking maintenance and
requesting servicing. Plus, it provides traffic and weather
info. Nikola Tre in its battery electric version features a driving
range up to 500 km and a charging time of 100 minutes,
while the fuel cell version has an 800 km driving range and a
charging time of less than 20 minutes. The Magirus Wolf R1
is a fully electric vehicle designed for firefighting and rescue
operations. The Daily Access Methane Power, the E-way.
The Cursor 16 1000, the F28, hybrid version, the Industrial
Battery Pack and the Microvast module for commercial
vechicles and minibuses, holding promises for high energy
density, low battery weight and long life. The eAxle designed
for heavy vehicles guarantees high performance, efficiency,
reliability and a low TCO. Hythane concept is a system for
blending hydrogen developed jointly with Landi Renzo. Lastly,
e-Novia showcased their Yape, a solution for driverless lastmile
coverage. Yape can interact with the e-Daily thanks to
the onboard Driver Pal and Alexa devices.
The Beyond Iveco Group Days
mirrored Iveco Group’s corporate
identity. FPT Industrial
comfortably slipped into the
role of “playmaker” of a genuinely
automotive team, without, though,
abandoning its offroad nature. Latest
hot news include the agreement
with Blue Energy Motors on the first
LNG trucks hitting the roads in India,
powered by Bharat VI-compliant
N67 NG engines. We grabbed the
chance to be at the backstage events
held this July at the Officine Grandi
Riparazioni in Corso Castelfidardo,
Turin, set against a scenic bare masonry
backdrop that’s reminiscent of
the Venetian Arsenal. We sat down
with Sylvain Blaise, who took the
helm of FPT Industrial precisely in
October, 2021. Since then, Iveco
Group has started walking on its own
(and so has FPT) war has been ignited
on Europe’s eastern borders and
the European Union has launched
REPowerEU. So we took the opportunity
to hear what Mr. Blaise thinks
of EU’s plan.
FPT Industrial is the
powertrain soul of the
Iveco Group and it was
also at “Beyond”, the
event that showed its
drive for innovation.
The gas-powered
Cursor 13 arrives on
Indian trucks
Shall this be a consecration of biomethane’s
breakthrough role not
only in heating, but also in automotive
applications?
“The current geopolitical trends have
strongly revived the efforts towards
energy independence,” he says at the
outset. “I see an opportunity to speed
up the path we have taken, but if we
look at the plan, certainly it won’t be
able to meet all of Europe’s gas needs
in the short term. In the mid to long
term, instead, REPowerEU may indeed
accelerate the energy transition.
The gas used for transport is a small
fraction of the total gas consumption
in Europe, but I think that at least it
has become an item on the agenda.
Natural gas is in our DNA, we’re
leader in propulsion systems using
this fuel and we see it as an integral
component of the future mix. Even
when we take hydrogen into consideration,
we do it in terms of application
to internal combustion engines, based
on our know-how. To us it is a natural
evolution”.
Sylvain Blaise’s opening words before
the audience at Beyond defined
FPT as a “key enabler” of the energy
transition. In essence, his speech
touched on the four pillars of FPT
Industrial’s approach, that basically
overlap those of Cursor X: the future
is about multiple energy sources (natural
gas and biomethane, green hydrogen,
electrification, electric axles,
batteries), modularity, a multi-application
approach that’s “smart”. We
asked him to elaborate on that. What
should we expect? We can guess
he’ll be pretty satisfied with the inauguration
of the new electrification
plant in Turin. And indeed, “I’d like
to start from electrification,” says the
President of the Powertrain business
unit, “because we’re going to inaugurate
our electrification plant right
here in Turin. Plus, with Nikola we’ll
also have electric heavy vehicles, and
e-axles have been produced for some
months now. The plant has been entirely
renovated, because continuous
development is part of our history,
and it’s right there where our roots
and the ‘brain’ of our powertrain are.
That’s the backdrop for our state-ofthe-art
industrialization and the implementation
of Industry 4.0 and IoT
development processes. This plant is
going to be carbon neutral from day
one. We’ve got axles for heavy vehicles,
by the end of the year we’ll also
have electric Daily vans, and a 1.4
GW capacity battery line, plus a few
bus applications”.
Under the spotlight is the agreement
signed with Blue Energy Motors to
put into service the very first liquified
natural gas trucks driven by Bahrat
VI-compliant N67 NG. These engines
will be manufactured on Turin’s production
lines. We asked Anirudh Bhuwalka
– CEO of the Pune-based company
– to sketch out a rough picture
of the European, North-American and
Indian truck markets.
“The truck market in India is very
different than in Europe and North
America. In Europe and North America
trucks travel an average of 1200 km
a day; in India, the longest distance
covered by a heavy vehicle is 350 km,
which makes power requirements very
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