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Environmental Care Has Long Been a Core Value of Volvo Trucks
This year marks the 35th anniversary of Volvo‘s introduction of the Integral Sleeper, the first North American conventional truck model to offer a modern, streamlined design and a fully integrated sleeper compartment.
Aerodynamic design directly affects fuel efficiency, reducing fuel costs for trucking companies, and reducing greenhouse gases. Environmental care has long been a core value for the Volvo Trucks, a position formalised at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, long before care for the environment became a trendy mainstream corporate aspiration.
“Pioneering innovations in design, fuel efficiency, driver productivity and safety have defined Volvo Trucks throughout our 90-year history. We are proud of our heritage and celebrate 35 years of aerodynamic design.
“With the Integral Sleeper model we truly introduced a new standard and all manufacturers quickly followed suit, a trend we continue to see today with automated manual transmissions, greater integration of connectivity services to help maximise uptime, and right-sizing of engines for improved fuel efficiency and weight savings,” said Magnus Koeck, Volvo Trucks North America Vice President, Marketing and Brand Management.
The Integral Sleeper was the first modern conventional model to unite the cab and sleeper compartments for improved aerodynamics with seamless body-in-white construction that also allowed easy pass-through from the driving environment to the living space.
The redefined truck design further defied industry-wide design conventions of the time, introducing a hood that was six inches narrower and six inches lower at the front than at the cowl, to help reduce wind resistance.
Integral Sleeper aerodynamics were further boosted through a full-height roof fairing, cab side extenders, chassis fairings and trim tabs that helped air flow smoothly from the tractor to the trailer.
An industry innovator in factory-installed connectivity, the brand today includes its connectivity hardware as standard equipment across its entire North American product range.
The connectivity hardware provides access to Remote Diagnostics, which provides proactive diagnostics and monitoring of critical engine, transmission and after-treatment trouble codes.
The brand also uses the standard onboard connectivity hardware in partnership with best-in-class fleet management providers.
Its standard, factory-installed hardware allows customers to perform software and parameter updates over-the-air with Remote Programming, which helps improve uptime and vehicle efficiency, whilst reducing downtime costs.
“We are in an exciting period when it comes to truck technology, and the speed of change is only accelerating.
“It is easy to get caught up in the technology revolution, but we must keep in mind the industry’s journey and the transformative designs and innovations that will continue to sculpt the shape of trucks to come,” said Agebrand.
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