Daimler Truck-owned Detriot announced Friday it would invest $375 million in its Redford, Mich., plant to facilitiate production of the company’s new DD5 and DD8 medium-duty engines.
The principle leaders of Daimler Trucks, along with former Detroit Diesel owner Roger Penske, fielded questions from the media Friday following the North American launch of the company’s new medium duty Diesel engines today, touching on a variety of products.
The new DD5 and DD8 engines give Daimler a fully integrated medium duty powertrain. When asked how the new engines would affect the company’s relationship with Cummins, Martin Daum, president of Daimler Trucks North America, noted that the company would continue to offer Cummins engines in its medium-duty vehicles.
“We will let the customer decide which engine they prefer,” he said.
The DD5 will appear early next year and is currently running in Europe as a Mercedes-branded engine, but Daum noted that it was wrong to assume the engines were the same.
“We focus on many factors for specific markets,” he explained, “including fuel mapping, shifting patterns and highway speeds. So these engines will reflect that input and be true North American engines.”
The Detroit DD5 will initially be for sale in limited quantities in 2016 on the Freightliner M2 product line. Extensive availability is expected in 2018 across DTNA’s product portfolio including Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, and Freightliner Custom Chassis vehicles.
The DD8 is slated to enter the market late in 2017.
– by Jack Roberts
