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MB does not sell any trailers to my knowledge so they could do much more that would give ideas to trailer manufacturers. They would not point out in any way that their trucks arent streamlined or harm the truck sales. MB trucks are IMO best what is out there at the moment when it comes to fuel efficiency.
You can use any trailer in your current truck so that is more important to start the evolution from the trailers. There are 4 key elements that should only matter:
1. costs and with this I mean lifetime costs
2. cd value
3. Weight of the trailer
4. how much m2 you can load inside the trailer.
So design aerodynamic and lightweight trailer that is cheap to manufacture you are the winner in the short run. If you also can increase the inner volume even better. You can do all this inside current EU laws if you know what you are doing.
I dont even know the reason why companies release that kind of studies if they don`t have the balls to make them. In my opinion MB only show their lack of engineering skills. They have wasted about million euros or more to design that prototype and its not giving any new products that could be better than current products on the market. I havent found any 1:1 photos of that trailer even it should be at Trailer 2011 fairs at the moment. I believe that it is only small scale desing study made by some designers. Sure it looks nice because it made by designer.
- Good engineer knows tons of different manufacturing methods and how to use them in intellectual way to create something new and innovative.
- Engineer should also know what the end users are ready to accept to their work environment.
- Good engineer don`t accept current solutions but wonders what could be done different and better than current models. If you are not able to create something better you take the next best solution (most engineer take this route).
- Engineer should not let designers ruin their genious ideas, because they look different etc. Desingers can do their magic in thing that dont matter to the engineer. I know this is a hard task to swallow but that`s how it should be.
I put it this way which one is easier to find really good engineer or designer?
If you are a engineer you respect those people who have the skills to design something new and innovative.
What comes to costs to design new truck sure its more expensive than to make only small visual changes. But the body of the truck is just steel beams welded together why don`t just make new model and set so high goals that it will be a sales success. If you design and engineer a truck and trailer combination that would be 20% more fuel efficient. Only few company would care how it shold look like. That is million per year fuel savings in big trucking companies. For superior product you could ask higher price to cover the costs. To make something like that truck is just waste of money with zero benefit.
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