Low Voltage Batteries Essential for the Future of Heavy-Duty Trucks
Learn about new low voltage battery technology and how technology can be used to benefit your trucks and your business.
Episode 334: Technology is not only changing on commercial vehicles, but it is changing parts manufacturing and distribution as well. In our interview we will be airing a rerun of one of our most popular interviews in the last year from when our host visited the Clarios booth at AAPEX 2023 and talked about low voltage battery technology.
In this episode, we also talk about how changing technology requires changes in our business to keep up. In our That’s Not Heavy Duty segment, we see how cargo theft is on the rise and what some companies are doing about it.
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Sponsors of this Episode
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine:
You are listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy-duty people.
Welcome to another episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. Can you believe this is episode 334? For me it’s hard to believe that we’ve done this many interviews and with all of that work that has been done over the last few years, The Heavy Duty Parts Report team is in need of a bit of a holiday.
So this week we are going to re-air, one of our most popular interviews from 2024. So let’s talk about what we are going to cover in this episode because although the interview is a rerun, some of the content is new, so let’s get into it.
So first of all, in this episode we are going to talk about changing technology, changing technology on trucks, changing technology in parts manufacturing and distribution. And if you listen to the end, you’re going to hear about how technology is playing a role both in stopping cargo theft and actually facilitating it and how therein lies a real problem.
We’re going to talk about that and if you listen right to the end, you’re going to hear about where the three biggest hotspots are for cargo theft in the United States.
So make sure you listen right to the end. So let’s talk a little bit about technology on commercial trucks because in the interview in this episode, we are going to talk about the changing technology when it comes to batteries and the electrical needs of trucks and how this is going to change the way and is changing the way we should spec batteries for our trucks based on vocation.
As I said, this is one of our most popular interviews in 2024, so if you haven’t heard it before, I hope you enjoy it for the first time. If you did listen to it in the past, I think you’re still going to enjoy listening to it again because there’s so much information packed into a very short interview, there’s always something for us to learn.
And before we get into all of that, I wanted to take a minute to talk about how technology is changing the way we manufacture parts, changing the way that we are distributing parts as well. So let’s talk a little bit about digital transformation.
It is very important that our industry thinks about adopting technology in a very specific way. So when you’re a heavy-duty parts manufacturer and you’re a distributor, you are there to serve the end user, the owner operator, the fleet, the repair shop, the mobile technician.
And what I have seen from some companies is that when they start down the road of integrating new technology that has an impact or has the potential at least for positively impacting the buying experience for the end user customer, they oftentimes are making decisions that are good for them as the supplier but not necessarily translating into an improvement in the buying experience for the customer.
And here’s the thing, if it doesn’t improve the buying experience for the end user customer, adoption is going to be low, right? If it’s still easier to pick up the phone, make a phone call, wait and talk to someone on the parts counter, wait for the parts to be delivered, or go down to the parts counter and pick up the parts yourself.
If that’s still an easier process and that’s a process that gets the right part to you the fastest, you’re not going to log into and be worried about whether or not you’re getting the right part. Be worried about whether or not this part’s going to show up when it says it’s going to be.
You’re going to default back to your old behavior and you’re going to use the traditional distribution model. But if we use technology to actually improve the buying experience for the end user customer, as demographic inversion continues to impact and shape our business landscape, more and more of these experienced people who grew up working in the traditional distribution model are going to retire.
And the people who replace them, especially the end user customers, are going to start demanding a different buying experience. They’re not going to have as many people to draw on. They’re going to be overworked and they’re going to be looking for the easy button with a technology that they trust and that they can have confidence in.
If you’re in charge of a heavy-duty parts company and you’re thinking about transitioning or you’re in the process of transitioning, please ask yourself, is this what the customer needs and wants and is this going to make their experience better?
The answer is no, no matter how much convenience it brings to you as the supplier, it’s the wrong choice. Now at the Heavy Duty Consulting Corporation, we work with dozens of companies and one of our core offerings is to help people make that digital transformation possible in their business.
And we help people to build something that actually works for the end user customer. So make sure you head over to heavydutyconsulting.com, check out our services. You’ll see where we list digital transformation.
You can learn more about what we do there. I hope you’re enjoying our conversation so far about changes in technology and what we just discussed about digital transformation. We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our awesome sponsors and we’ll be right back.
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If you’re responsible for a fleet, you won’t believe how much using Hengst Filters will save you, but you’ve got to go to heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst to find out more.
That’s heavydutypartsreport.com/hengst. Head there now. At Diesel Laptops, they go way beyond diagnostic tools. They are your complete shop efficiency partner from diesel technician training to complete repair information, parts lookup tools and robust technical support. They are there to support you every step of the way. Learn more and download your free starter pack today by visiting diesel laptops.com. That’s diesellaptops.com.
HDA Truck Pride is the heart of the independent parts and service channel. They have 750 parts stores and 450 service centers conveniently located across the US and Canada. Visit heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride today to find a location near you. Again that’s heavydutypartsreport.com/hdatruckpride and let the heart of the independent service channel take care of your commercial equipment.
We’re back from our break. Before the break, we were talking about how technology is changing the way we are going to go to market when we manufacture and distribute heavy-duty parts using that digital sales channel and really the need for traditional manufacturing and distribution companies to look at digital transformation.
In our interview for this episode, we are talking to Clarios who is making sure that the end user has the information they need to make a great buying decision and to adjust the batteries that they purchase for their commercial vehicles based on the vocation that they are using. That piece of commercial equipment in this interview was at the Clarois booth at Apex ’23 and was originally aired on January 15th, 2024.
As I said before, it was one of our most popular interviews of 2024, so I hope you enjoy it. This is Federico Morales- Zimmerman, he’s the Group Vice President and General Manager of Original Equipment, also involved heavily in R&D at Clarios. And Clarios is one of the largest manufacturers of batteries for nearly every type of vehicle.
They understand these systems for heavy-duty, but they also are involved in all of the electrical systems and batteries for automotive, medium-duty and heavy-duty. So Federico, with all of that said, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report.
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jamie Irvine:
Glad to have you here. So let’s talk about some of the significant changes that we’ve seen over the last few years as we were prepping for this conversation. I was mentioning that 25 years ago when everything was mechanical, it was a completely different world. So give us an overview of really what’s driving the need for a change in batteries and electrical systems in general for commercial trucks.
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
Thank you. Thank you very much. I think for commercial trucks specifically, we see a couple of fundamental changes in the industry, not only from the technology perspective but also from a sustainability and circularity perspective. And I think this is where we as Clarios play a key role in how do we design the best value low voltage applications for the truck.
The truck now is becoming more digitalized and becoming more safer and becoming more functionality around autonomous. And those are key enablers that are changing the architecture in the truck.
And to be able to design the best low voltage solutions for this, you have to be able to understand the systems of the architecture. It’s not any more simple placing a black box order for a battery. It’s a process that includes deep understanding, deep collaboration with a track manufacturer to find the best solution for them.
Diana Cudmore:
So that was great. Now Jamie, I know that you were around in the old days, so how about you tell me what was battery tech like maybe coming from the sixties up to the nineties?
Jamie Irvine:
Okay, so let’s just be clear here. I didn’t start my career in heavy-duty till 1998, so I wasn’t there selling heavy-duty parts back in the sixties. If you grew up, let’s say like I did as a kid in the eighties, or if you’re older than that, and even you Diana, probably the early vehicles when you were a child that your family had, they were very mechanical.
So think of that station wagon that we all drove around in as kids with our families and think about how the windows there was manual roll up and roll down the clock actually wasn’t even digital, it was an actual clock that had hands on it. The radio was not a complicated device, it was an A track, a tape player. Then maybe in the nineties it was a CD player. But again, we’re talking about very, very basic inside of the cab controls.
And when you think about those older vehicles, they were basic, they were mechanical. The load on the battery was really only ever needed when you were going to start the vehicle. Maybe if you were going to listen to the radio with the vehicle off, that was about the only time you would ever draw battery power.
So when you think about how everything was manual in those vehicles, it was no different in commercial trucks. In fact, they had less comfort than automotive back then. So with old trucks, there was really just four batteries. They were called group 31’s and they were starting batteries.
They were just there to start the vehicle. And again, maybe if you had the truck off and you were operating your CB radio or you were operating the radio to listen to music or something, that would be about the only time you would ever need to use battery power in those older vehicles. But of course everything has changed now.
Diana Cudmore:
Right exactly. Now I’m 29 right now, but believe it or not, I am old enough to remember why we call it rolling down the windows, but nowadays I think of my personal vehicle and everything is electric. Right. And I’m sure that that’s carried over to heavy-duty as well.
Jamie Irvine:
Oh, absolutely. In fact, I would say even more so especially if you’re in the long haul business, you have a sleeper cab and you’ve got creature comforts built into that vehicle, right? You’ve got a microwave, maybe you’ve got a PlayStation four or five, you want to control the climate in the vehicle while you’re sleeping. And then in addition to that, there are so many more electronic components in the cab of that truck. So everything is electronic.
You’ve got big display screens, you’ve got electric windows, you’ve got specific ECMs just dedicated to controlling the seat of the vehicle for the driver. It is crazy how much these vehicles have changed and have been modernized and how much electronics are now used.
And you think of also telematics and just the list goes on and on and on. Even the way that the vehicle shifts gears. In the old days when everything was mechanical, it was all done by cable. Now it’s all done by electric signals.
And so just the entire commercial vehicles, all of those trucks now, especially the long haul ones, but even the vocational trucks have such a higher demand for power for electricity. And if that vehicle isn’t on, if that truck’s not running and the alternator isn’t generating electricity, then you’re drawing down your batteries like never before.
Diana Cudmore:
Wow. So I could understand how this sort of older system of batteries just isn’t really working. So what are battery manufacturers maybe like Clarios doing to kind of update this system so that we’re not always waking up to a dead battery in the morning?
Jamie Irvine:
So here’s the problem. The load on batteries is growing almost like year over year, right? It’s getting more and more and more. And in many ways we’re still thinking about it like that bank of four batteries that are just there as starting batteries. And that’s where you can get into trouble because as the trucks are advancing in technology, the specs for the batteries are changing.
And when you go to change your batteries, sometimes the old school thinking about batteries goes into play and people just end up installing four group 31 batteries and they’re not designed for the new needs. So it’s even worse with sleeper cabs.
Like I mentioned trucks, it’s bad enough, but with sleeper cabs and long haul, you’ve got all of these things like running your AC and you can have all of these different components that are electronic, create a parasitic draw on the battery, which results in batteries being depleted faster, they’re having to be depleted and then charged back up again, depleted and charged.
And they’re not really designed for that if you’re installing those kind of starting batteries only. And so then they fail prematurely. And so a couple things can happen. One, you can get stuck out on the road with some dead batteries and that creates a mechanical call and having to have someone come out and get some new batteries and install them, and that’s downtime.
You can also have where certain components in the truck just aren’t working at full capacity and that can cause all kinds of other problems as well. So it’s not a good situation and so you need to update the way you look at batteries when you’re working on these modern trucks.
Diana Cudmore:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So let’s hear from Federico. He is explaining this concept of rather than high voltage, low voltage batteries and how they can assist in this issue. So let’s hear from Federico.
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
Low voltage will I think become even more important to the future, and it’s because of safety relevant features of trucks. When it comes to safety, there’s nothing you can compromise and the low voltage architecture is going to become more evident and more embedded into the systems to support safety critical functions.
Also, from the overall system perspective, if you look ahead specifically in the truck world, going more into a service oriented provider, we can bring more solutions, meaning being able to predict the health of the battery, for instance, it’s a key word right now.
We are right now running a couple of fleet where we are trying to utilize our knowledge around chemistries, around electronics, around software to be able to predict the health of the battery and with that to reduce significant downtime for truck operators and fleet operators.
Diana Cudmore:
So Federico mentioned that they’re working on predicting the health of batteries. How is that even possible? Because it seems like your batteries are totally fine until one day you wake up, it’s cold in your truck and they’re not fine, they’re dead. So how are they changing the situation from knowing that a battery is dead when it’s too late to actually being able to predict that in the future?
Jamie Irvine:
So batteries consist of metal plates basically sitting in an acid mixture. It’s where you create that chemical reaction that allows the battery to hold the charge and as they discharge and recharge, those plates can corrode.
I also mentioned that when you are working in environments where there’s a lot of vibration, road vibration, those plates over time can break as well, which then that creates the battery to slowly lose its ability to hold a charge. Eventually, as these plates get fragile and they break, like I said, they can’t hold the charge anymore.
So if you have let’s say 10 plates in a battery and one breaks, your battery starts to reduce by a percentage, maybe 10%, and then another one breaks and another one, another one, another one, eventually the battery just can’t hold a charge anymore. And that’s not the only reason these plates breaking.
That’s not the only reason that that happens. But that’s one of the reasons as batteries though, if they’re not designed to completely discharge and recharge on a regular basis, it’s just kind of like driving a vehicle in first gear on the highway. You could do it for a while, but it’s not designed to do that.
So eventually something’s going to break. At any rate, over time batteries lose their ability to hold charge. And so what companies are doing now is they’re saying, look, based on the usage of this battery, we can then with algorithms predict when that battery is likely to fail.
So you have to think about the situation with starting batteries. They’re designed to put out a lot of charge to start the battery for a very short period of time. The alternator charges them back up again and they stay at basically full for long periods of time.
If you then have that battery, that’s a starting battery and you’re using it inappropriately by drawing down all of the battery charge to zero and then having to charge it back up again, and you’re doing that over and over again because running these hotel features, that’s just going to cause the battery to fail prematurely.
So it’s really now the way we look at it now is you have to match the right kind of battery for the application to meet the demands of the truck and the vocation of how that truck is being used.
Diana Cudmore:
Right, that makes perfect sense. So let’s see what Federico has to say about this.
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
When it comes again to the system understanding correct and I think the functionality that you need on those battery solutions. I think again, it’s not anymore about placing a black order for a battery. You have to really understand what’s required on the architecture side of the vehicle not to provide the most costly solution. I would say the most value added solution for the customers.
Jamie Irvine:
Yeah, value added. So we’re talking about the difference between just looking at the purchase price and actually matching what you’re buying to your specific need. So how would you recommend, if you’re a fleet and you’re looking at a maintenance and repair program, how should they go about deciding which battery they choose for different vocations?
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
I think this is a question that we get a lot from our customers, depends on the usage of your truck, depends on which fleet are you operating, which ranges are you having in mind, and also also the weather conditions played significant role into it. So if you can be able to simulate this in a way that you can simulate the entire architecture of it, I think this is where we can provide the biggest value to the customers.
Jamie Irvine:
And when you take the time to do that, then you can very quickly see, well, if I buy this, if I buy the incorrect battery and inject it into my fleet, maybe it’s cheaper to buy, but it’s going to cost an awful lot on the backend where you’re going to have all kinds of issues. What kinds of issues do you see come up when someone’s not matched the battery now to the vocation?
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
For the truck operator it comes to the downtime solution, correct? You want to avoid costly downtime solutions but not specified, not using the right battery solution in your truck. You will run into issues. You want to run into downtime, you want to run into significant repair cost as well because you don’t have a mismatch of battery systems in your truck, which is going to be at the end of it more costly.
Jamie Irvine:
So maybe break down for me the specific types of things that happen that lead to the downtime. Are we just talking about a battery that loses its charge more quickly? Are we talking about systems failures within the truck? What are we talking about when we say that it contributes to downtime?
Federico Morales-Zimmerman:
Well, the trucks nowadays are becoming more and more complex. The power loads in the truck, the battery is not only to start the engine when you are basically sitting on a parking lot, you have a system you have to operate. You have certain devices in the truck that you are operating.
So this I think where the battery systems come into play and by not utilizing the right setup, you will run into significant downtime. You will run into significant health issues of the battery and use multi batteries solutions. You’ll also start damaging other batteries that could be holding a longer life.
Jamie Irvine:
Right so it’s a completely different world if you’re on the part side of the business. You need to really learn and work with manufacturers and suppliers like Clario to be able to understand how to help customers diagnose problems, how to make the right recommendations. Well, I hope you enjoyed this interview about low voltage battery technology.
I hope it gave you something to think about the way that you should be selling the product, the way that if you’re buying it, you should be specking it. If you have any questions about that, if you want to learn more, make sure you head over to clarios.com. Links are in the show notes as I mentioned.
It’s now time for That’s Not Heavy Duty. In this edition of That’s Not Heavy Duty. I wanted to talk a little about cargo theft. Now in the town that I live in, there is a real serious problem with theft.
We see all the time that pickup trucks are being stolen out of commercial trucking companies yards. We hear about the theft that’s going on in our community and it’s definitely something that over time feels like it’s getting worse.
Now we are showing you a little clip from a report that was done on cargo theft and how that is really spiking and how American trucks are really under attack from thieves. I want you to watch the beginning part of the clip. We’re going to include the entire link so you can watch the entire nine minute report, but just watch this first minute or so of the report.
I think it really puts into context what’s going on when it comes to cargo theft and how technology is playing a role both in solving the problem but also contributes to the problem. Listen in and watch for where the top three hotspots in cargo theft is. Okay, let’s roll the video.
That’s Not Heavy Duty News Video:
These thieves are breaking into the back of a cargo truck.
The old famous saying, why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is. It’s the same kind of situation with freight and how freight moves around the world.
Cargo theft has more than doubled in just a year. Nearly $130 million worth of goods vanished in 2023, and that’s only what’s been reported.
I think we’re at an all time high. I haven’t seen cargo theft at this level that we can remember.
California, Texas, and Florida rank as the top hotspots, but the risk isn’t limited to the coasts. More incidents are being reported inland in logistics hubs like Chicago and here in Louisville, Kentucky.
So the warehouse here is positioned within a fully secure yard.
And the industry is fighting back.
We have invested millions and millions of dollars to reduce any of that theft.
Companies are investing in tech like this.
A covert tracking device that’s going to be applied.
Cargo thieves aren’t just simply breaking into trucks or hijacking trucks.
The way we connect now to technology has allowed us to move at such lightning speed. It’s kind of hard to slow that down and therein lies the problem.
Jamie Irvine:
Okay, so you just listened or watch the video. If you’re listening on the audio version, make sure you go over to heavydutypartsreport.com, click on the show notes for this episode and click the link so you can watch the actual video version. Like I said, you can watch the whole nine minute video. It’s really interesting. Did you catch where the three hotspots are, right? We’re talking California, Texas, and Florida.
Not surprising since those are big port areas where a lot of cargo is coming in from international sources. But as you also notice that really cargo theft is on the rise all over the country, even in places like Kentucky where they were filming. And so this is a big problem. It’s a problem in the States. It’s a problem in Canada, and it doesn’t just hurt the people who are in the trucking industry and the people who experience the cargo theft.
This also contributes to inflation, contributes to rising costs because obviously loss prevention, whether it’s at the retail level or it’s right out of the back of a truck, contributes to rising prices. So this is certainly an issue we have to keep an eye on and continue all of us to try to do our part to combat this. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Heavy Duty Parts Report. If you haven’t already, head over to heavydutypartsreport.com and click the follow button.
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