COVER STORY: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY oemoffhighway.com/21533254
ELECTRIFICATION EFFORTS ADVANCE THROUGH Engineering Collaboration Partnerships between companies are becoming increasingly important to help advance new technology. by Sara Jensen
Webasto has formed a technology collaboration with IAV in which the companies will research the electrification of buses, trucks and heavy machinery.
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ndustry partnerships are nothing new in the heavy-duty equipment design industry. However, their prevalence has grown in recent years particularly as development efforts for electrification have progressed. In late 2020, Daimler and Volvo Group announced they would work together on a joint venture aimed at advancing development of fuel cells for heavy-duty on-highway vehicles. Both companies have been actively working in the electrification space
and will be able to bring together years of experience. When it comes to electrification of mobile applications, there are a variety of technologies coming together and no single company can master and integrate those technologies in order to provide customers an optimized solution, says Kimmo Rauma, Vice President of Danfoss Power Solutions. Because of this, company collaborations are becoming increasingly important to help advance new technology. Companies which collaborate with one another can bring their individual expertise to a project. Rauma says each company’s engineering team can focus on designing the components it already knows best; then the teams can work closely together to bring their technologies into a single, cohesive system that will meet customer requirements.
Creating optimized solutions
WEBASTO
Danfoss Editron—a business division of Danfoss Power Solutions—announced in April 2021 it was partnering with Meritor Inc. and Electra Commercial Vehicles to form the Meritor-led Electric Powertrain Integration for Heavy Commercial Vehicles (EPIC) consortium. The consortium’s goal is to develop advanced electric powertrains. Each company will bring its own industry expertise to the project. Danfoss Editron, for instance, will bring its knowledge developing electric motors and inverters. According to Rauma, the company will be looking
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OEM Off-Highway | AUGUST 2021
