Stuttgart / Atlanta ? ?The Future. Driven by you? ? from 28th to 31st October this year, Daimler Trucks presents its product and service innovations at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show (NACV), the leading trade show for commercial vehicles in North America. This year Daimler Trucks, one of the world's largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, will be placing the topic of customer experience and service in central focus as part of its fair presentation. With a new customer experience (CX) organization, Daimler Trucks aims to ensure that customer requests and proposals can be responded to and implemented even faster and more customized. Data-based and connected services assisting the customer in running their core business faster, more efficiently and therefore more successfully in all stages of using Daimler Trucks products are among the important innovations. For the first time, leasing customers will have the option of choosing a dynamic leasing solution that is oriented around the use of the truck.
Visitors will experience a 43,000-sq. ft. exhibition booth designed to resemble a US dealership. In total, the North American market leader will have around 20 exhibits from its commercial vehicle brands Freightliner, Western Star and Thomas Built Buses on display, including the Detroit power unit brand and the Detroit Connect connectivity platform. The new Freightliner Cascadia with partially automated driving functions (SAE level 2) will definitely be a major attraction at the exhibition booth. Visitors to the fair can become familiar with the current best-selling Class 8 truck in the USA and see future enhancements, including a Detroit DD15 Gen 5 engine from the next generation of Daimler Trucks' Heavy Duty Engine family.
"The North American Commercial Vehicle Show is the ideal venue for us to demonstrate our innovation leadership and customer-focused solutions of today as well as for the future," said Roger Nielsen, President and CEO of DTNA. "Our market success comes from an unwavering commitment to delivering for everyone who moves the world."
New customer experience organisation to optimise customer service
Real customer focus begins with listening to customers' concerns. Since 2017 Daimler Trucks has been intensifying its exchange of viewpoints with truck customers from all areas of the transport industry through the Customer Experience Days, with the aim of learning how to work on future product and service solutions together. The result of this process is the June 2019 formation of a new customer experience (CX) organization under the leadership of Paul Romanaggi, an industry veteran with a 34-year experience in the areas of aftersales, services and spare parts management. The new organization aims to sharpen customer focus in order to further reduce processing and maintenance times, and therefore vehicle downtime. This means that the entire service process, from vehicle acceptance to maintenance up to vehicle pick up, is expected to become much more efficient for the customer. For this purpose, DTNA has created new, app-based communication channels which allow the customer to intuitively communicate with the service department and workshop from anywhere. It is DTNA's aspiration that no processing operation for a service order take longer than 24 hours.
Customers pay as they drive ? Dynamic Leasing with ?pay as you drive? rates
Furthermore, financial service subsidiary Daimler Truck Financial is also focusing more strongly on customer requests. Their new Dynamic Lease service, presented at the NACV, is the first ?pay as you drive? leasing option. With Dynamic Lease, the leasing rate for a truck depends on the actual use of the vehicle. Apart from the typical basic charge, the customer is billed only the actual driven mileage. Conventional leasing requires the customer to estimate the truck's mileage in the coming years and either pay a fee for exceeding this mileage or an allowance in case of remaining below the pre-determined mileage. North American customers are able to use these telematics-based financing options from the first quarter of 2020 on, initially only for the new Freightliner Cascadia with integrated Detroit powertrain.
Freightliner Cascadia, the best-selling truck in the US, with the new Detroit DD15 Gen 5 engine
Now coming to customers after its world premiere at the CES early this year: with the new Freightliner Cascadia, Daimler Trucks is presenting the first partially automated truck (SAE level 2) for the North American market at its exhibition booth in Atlanta. Also on board: Detroit Assurance 5.0, the newest array of active safety systems, with state-of-the-art emergency brake, distance-regulation, lane keeping and turn-off assistants. The new system is able to independently brake, accelerate and steer. Unlike other systems that are only active above a certain speed, Detroit Assurance 5.0 enables partially automated driving in all speed ranges. This makes the Freightliner Cascadia one of the safest trucks on American roads. With the help of virtual reality, NACV visitors can experience these functions and also familiarize themselves with the Sideguard Assist system, which warns the driver of pedestrians and cyclists in the vehicle's blind spot along both truck and trailer.
With the Detroit DD15 Gen 5, Daimler Trucks is also presenting the next generation of its Heavy-Duty Engine Platform (HDEP), which is in use throughout the entire company, for the first time in Atlanta. Available on the American market from 2021 on in the Class 8 segment, the engine will benefit from increased fuel efficiency and lower CO? emissions. In line with Daimler Trucks' global platform strategy, the next generation of heavy-duty engines will also be used in the vehicles of the Mercedes-Benz Trucks sister brand.
About Daimler Trucks North America
Daimler Trucks North America, LLC headquartered in Portland, Oregon, is the leading heavy-duty truck manufacturer in North America. DTNA produces and markets commercial vehicles under the Freightliner, Western Star and Thomas Built Buses nameplates. With a 38-per cent market share in the NAFTA region in the first half of 2019, DTNA has remained the undisputed market leader in the vehicle classes 6 through 8. The DTNA production network encompasses nine locations. In addition to the headquarters and manufacturing plant in Portland (Oregon), DTNA has four manufacturing plants in North Carolina (Cleveland, Gastonia, High Point, and Mount Holly) and one manufacturing plant each in Redford (Michigan) and Gaffney (South Carolina). DTNA has two additional manufacturing facilities in Mexico (Saltillo and Santiago Tianguistenco).
