Preferences around safety technology

The latest Future of Trucking report includes truck buyer’s preferences around safety technology, in a period where the number of safety technologies available to the the truck maker is increasing at a rapid rate.

The amount of data flowing through a modern truck’s CANbus coming from smart cameras and myriad sensors, has seen the proliferation of acronyms in a truck’s specification, both as standard or optional.

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Because it is a standalone truck maker and not part of a larger automotive global conglomerate, Isuzu in recent years has been lagging behind its main competitors.

Isuzu needed a complete renewal of its platform to be able to offer the kind of sophistication on offer elsewhere. With the launch of the 2025 models, the range is brought back up to date and able to compete on a toe-to-toe basis with its main competitors.

The FoT report was the tool used by the truck maker to develop the latest models, with customer preferences front of mind.

“The survey showed potential customers were keen to adopt forward facing cameras which recorded events, like dash cams,” said Simon Humphries, Isuzu Senior Product Manager, Commercial Vehicles and Chief Engineer.

“These are normally an aftermarket fitment, but some vehicles have got them fitted as standard. The last survey also gave adaptive cruise control a lot higher preference than you might expect from its lack of regulation.

“This has driven us to include adaptive cruise control in just about every model in the 2025 range.

“For example. It’s going to be standard on just about every truck we sell from next year.

“AEB and ESC are up there in the top five in the survey, and they are subject to a new regulation and are, of course, included in the new models.”

Blind spot monitoring and driver monitoring systems also ranked highly in the survey and the technology for them is built into next year’s models.

However, Isuzu is not making them standard from the outset, preferring to do more testing in Australia when the product is on the ground here as the new functions are tailored to our market and our systems.

“We know that all these features, or certainly most of them, are very common in passenger cars and blind spot monitoring was a clear number one in the FoT survey,” said Simon.

“That’s quite interesting, because it’s quite uncommon to find those even on the European sourced trucks at the moment, but it will become a regulation. It’s one of those that’s underway, and it’s going to be a regulation for vehicles that are over 2.5 metres wide with the safer freight vehicles package.

“Driver cameras or alerts to prevent fatigue and distraction, otherwise known as DMS or driver monitoring system, are coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next five years that a change pops up, adopting one of the European regulations to make DMS standard and mandatory. We’ll be ready for it, of course.

“Stability Control will be pretty much standard on every truck sold from next year, with very few exceptions, plus AEB and then Lane Keep Assist. LKA rated very highly with our survey respondents, and the awareness rate was quite high, because it’s become quite common.”

Another new feature to be introduced will be adaptive driving beam, something that’s appeared on luxury cars now and will trickle down into smaller ones. It will be on most of the new Isuzu trucks next year.

The Isuzu strategy, at this point, is to talk about the safety systems now and go into details about engine and transmission specifications later. One of the buzz words used by Isuzu at this launch was ‘modularity’, suggesting common componentry across the range to reduce complexity.

Increased commonality of the parts across the range can reduce the engineering lead time to give the truck maker an opportunity to make changes like taking a diesel engine out of a truck and inserting an electric drive train or a fuel cell without having to completely redesign the entire model.

All of this technology will be on display at the 2025 Brisbane Truck Show, planned to be the official public launch of the 2025 range and the first public showcase on the entire range.

“The way we are doing this new model roll-out this year is very different to the way we have done it previously,” said Andrew.

“The reality is, the world is such a small place, and when a truck gets launched in Japan, all of a sudden it’s all over the internet. So our customers here in Australia are across it and we can’t control the messaging.

“At this point we are choosing to just focus on fundamentals, which is our safety suite.

“This is such a leap forward, not just for Isuzu, but for the trucking industry, it’s a story that deserves focus in and of itself. Please don’t underestimate the differential between what is being mandated and what is available in our safety suite.”