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Dec 23, 2023

Complete Integrated Driveline

It has been coming for a long time, but now in 2023, we have reached the point

It has been coming for a long time, but now in 2023, we have reached the point where there is now a complete integrated driveline available from a single supplier which is not a truck manufacturer.

This video's aim is to illustrate the Cummins integrated powertrain. It shows far the engine maker has come in its quest to be able to offer a single package to truck manufacturers and to truck buyers.

The days of buying a truck 15 or 20 years ago, when you bought a truck from a manufacturer and you would have a choice, in the instance of a North American truck, between the Cummins, Caterpillar or Detroit Diesel engine.

There were similar choices, while traveling on down through the drive line with a choice of gearboxes, whether it be Road Ranger or Spicer or any other weird and wonderful automatic which may have been on offer.

The rear axle would come with various rear axle ratios, but also varied manufacturers of the components offering different styles of drive axles with varied advantages plus drive shaft options.

The Cummins engine was just one small part, albeit a very expensive part, of that drive line. Now here we see how the expansion of Cummins has developed, with its most recent development being its purchase of the Meritor organisation giving buyers access to many other parts of the drive line.

At the same time the relationship between the Cummins technology and that coming out of Eaton has got much closer over time, to the point where the latest X15 engine and the Endurant XD AMT, were made for each other, bot figuratively and in actual fact.

Cummins also offer an integrated after-treatment system for exhaust emissions which includes a diesel oxidation catalyst, diesel particulate filter, AdBlue injection module, selective catalytic reduction module and an ammonia slip catalyst, all of which bring the overall emissions from a diesel engine down to the more acceptable levels at Euro 6.

Earlier this century, the engine maker was in danger of being sidelined, as many of the truck brands which had offered Cummins engines as part of their repertoire, became part of large global groups who had their own proprietary engine associated with the brand.

The tendency was to move closer to the European concept of truck design, rather than the ‘mix and match’ approach favoured for many years in North America. Cummins have played the smart long term game and arrived at a point the brand can the kind of integration needed in truck design in the 2020s.