The Mercedes-Benz Actros is undergoing final testing and validation with customers in Germany. One of them is transportation company Wagenstetter from Forsting in Upper Bavaria.
Drivers’ main routes are between the Ruhr area and Northern Italy. Within a very short space of time, the company’s trucks can cover an extremely high amount of mileage; two drivers can sometimes cover over 300,000km per annum.
A special focus was placed on Actros’s Active Drive Assist technology, which enables partially automated driving in all speed ranges.
One of the test drivers, Tom Westphal, said, “To start with, I had to get used to the system. It is definitely a very different driving feel, but you quickly come to trust it because the corrections always make sense and improve safety. This is useful especially in long-distance haulage.”
Westphal was also impressed with how the predictive powertrain control function performed during testing: “I can now relax as I travel through the countryside with cruise control; predictive powertrain control selects the appropriate gear and the right speed. For example, when driving into a village, the system automatically detects the speed and sticks to it.”