Do Volvo Trucks offer any kind of driving automation?
- September 24, 2021
- Blog
- Posted by Derick
- Leave your thoughts
Volvo heavy trucks and rigs are the most technologically advanced vehicles on the road. As a brand Volvo prides itself on being on the leading edge of… well everything when it comes to trucking, so naturally, it took an organization like Volvo to offer the revolutionary “I-See” predictive cruise control technology.
Volvo’s I-See technology uses cloud based map data to actually analyze the upcoming road topography as you are driving on highways in cruise control. It literally reads the road ahead of you, and then adjusts the vehicle to maximize fuel consumption by using a combination of the vehicles speed, gears and engine brake. While any trucker knows, when you are driving a rig, even small road gradient increases can make a massive impact on fuel consumption, and in turn your bank account. With Volvo’s I See technology, it divides the ascent, peak and descent into six distinct steps, all with the intent of saving fuel.
Here is a summary of the six steps.
- Preparing for the ascent. The Volvo truck accelerates to improve hill climbing.
- The climb itself. Avoiding down shifting.
- Just before the peak, I-see reduces speed to prepare for descent.
- For the descent, I-See temporarily disengages the driveline allowing the vehicle to coast.
- During the descent, as the truck coasts, I-See engages auxiliary brakes where necessary.
- If there is another hill ahead it allows the vehicle to coast to build up momentum.
This allows your Volvo heavy truck to maximize its moving (or kinetic) energy better… which means less application of the gas pedal (and as any trucker knows, every time your foot touches the pedal, it costs them money!). But I-See isn’t done there. As this technology reads the road several kilometres ahead. It even uploads the road information into its stored data storage!
Watch this video illustrating this amazing technology…
As one of the most popular truck manufacturing companies in the world, Volvo prides themselves on engineering the finest heavy trucks and rigs available today, while at the same time going beyond the truckers needs, and they’ve been doing exactly this for almost a century! Thanks to Volvo’s endless focus and refinements when it comes to driver protection and performance, heavy truck drivers continue to move to Volvo as the rig of choice for heavy truck drivers, fleets and trucking companies.
Gerrys Truck Centre in London Ontario has been the “truckers choice” for Volvo Trucks for over three decades. We offer sales of new and used (pre-owned rigs) as well as parts and service, and pride ourselves on top quality service.