Climate Protection Through Innovation

The world is in a constant state of change. Effective climate protection requires both creativity and expert knowledge. With the aim of cutting fossil fuel consumption, MAN is developing new transportation and energy solutions that make our mobility even more efficient - and that take account of the entire product lifecycle.

Negotiated at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, the Paris Agreement represents a global consensus on climate protection. Signatories have agreed to conserve fossil fuels and radically cut greenhouse-gas emissions. To achieve the targets, government, society, and business will have to work together. Industry must act as an innovator and provide efficient technology that contributes to a reduction in oil, gas, and diesel consumption.

Because the transportation and logistics sector is responsible for around one-quarter of global CO2 emissions, it can play a key role in slowing the pace of climate change. As one of Europe's leading commercial vehicle and mechanical engineering players, the MAN Group sees energy efficiency as an essential element of its products and production processes. We place top priority on the development and use of alternative drives and fuels. In 2011, MAN launched its integrated climate strategy, with five core initiatives aimed at both its production sites and its products.

Innovation is the key

Innovation is the key to achieving modern forms of mobility that are also climate-friendly. MAN offers powerful machines and engines that save fuel and conserve resources, designed to reduce the emissions generated by the transportation sector. MAN takes a holistic view of the lifecycle of its products, extending from the production stage to the use phase and continuing through to the remanufacturing of used components.

Production powered by the sun

Integrated climate protection begins in the production process. MAN has set itself the target of reducing the CO2 emissions of its plants 25 percent by 2020, compared to a 2008 baseline. Having cut emissions by 19.5 percent in 2015, the Group is on track to meet this goal.
Through combined heat and power (CHP), LED lighting, and renewables, MAN is approaching the challenge from many different angles, always with the aim of reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Photovoltaic systems represent one of the most effective ways to conserve resources at our facilities.

Since the end of 2014, our production site in Pinetown, South Africa, has been generating more solar power than it needs for its own operations, allowing it to feed surplus electricity into the local grid. A total of 6,300 sq meters of solar collectors, combined with 300 days of sunshine each year, make Pinetown MAN’s first carbon-neutral plant. And our production sites in Munich and Plauen in Germany and Changzhou in China also use photovoltaic systems to generate green electricity.

Engines powered by natural gas

Some 90 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions produced over the product lifecycle are generated during the use phase. For MAN, this makes it all the more important to develop alternative drive systems for trucks and ships that are reliable and low-emission. Gas-powered engines play an important role here.

Running on natural gas, the MAN Lion’s City GL CNG municipal bus almost achieves CO2-neutral operation. If one considers not only the purchase price but also the operating and maintenance costs, the bus also offers savings of around 15 percent – a good example of economy and ecology in harmony.

Marine transportation is also made more climate-friendly with MAN gas-powered engines. And MAN unites energy efficiency and flexibility in its dual-fuel engines, which can run on both liquid and gaseous fuels. When running on natural gas, the engine’s CO2 and nitrogen oxide emissions are significantly lower, while sulfur oxides, soot, and particulate emissions are almost completely eliminated.

In addition to highly efficient gas-powered engines, MAN offers exhaust after-treatment systems that can be retrofitted to older engines, allowing them to meet current and future emissions requirements.

Coaching in the digital revolution

Increasing costs and fierce competition are among the many challenges facing the transportation sector. MAN is leveraging the digital revolution to make efficient vehicles even more efficient – cutting costs for its customers and conserving resources. Truck connectivity plays a key role in this process.

Today, MAN already offers integrated services that cut fuel consumption, optimize fleet-capacity utilization, and reduce downtime for servicing and maintenance. All this is made possible by the MAN TeleMatics vehicle module, which collects vehicle and driving data and makes it available to the customer in real time. Vehicle servicing can be scheduled well in advance, optimizing fleet-capacity planning. As a result, the trucks operate more efficiently, saving both time and fuel.

MAN also uses digitization to foster more environmentally compatible styles of driving. The driver still has a major influence on fuel economy – even if driver assistance systems already play an important supporting role. With its Connected CoDriver system, MAN offers its customers a green driving coach as a temporary virtual co-driver. MAN TeleMatics captures the driving data, which allows the coach to analyze the vehicle, the style of driving, and the route profile. Based on this information, the coach can use the hands-free system to speak to the driver and provide advice on more efficient driving. This can help even experienced drivers achieve a further reduction in fuel consumption.

Riding the slipstream

Thanks to digitization and connectivity, trucks can safely follow one another, nose-to-tail. Road trains made up of multiple trucks, known as “platoons,” help to save fuel. They could also boost the safety and efficiency of transporting goods by highway. To demonstrate the potential of this concept, MAN took part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge – a test drive in which the trucks are linked by digital data transmission.

Two or more trucks follow each other at a close distance, allowing them to take full advantage of the slipstream of the vehicle in front. The driver of the lead vehicle sets the pace and the direction, with the following vehicles in semi-automated driving mode. Driver assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control and autonomous emergency braking systems ensure that one vehicle can safely follow another with no risk of a collision, despite the short following distance.

These compact and energy-efficient formations have a marked positive impact on the flow of traffic, while diesel consumption and CO2 emissions are cut by up to 10 percent. Platooning is a clear example of the extent to which the transportation sector will change, with fully connected trucks making the roads safer and the air cleaner.

Returned to the product lifecycle

The climate footprint of a vehicle depends to a large extent on the length of its service life. A long service life for the individual technical components not only makes economic sense, but also leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions and resource consumption in the production of new ones.

With our MAN Genuine Parts ecoline initiative, we extend the service life of our genuine parts – such as coolant pumps or crankshafts – by returning used parts to the use phase. A comprehensive remanufacturing process in our plant in Nuremberg, Germany, completely restores the functionality of used original components.

The first step is a thorough cleaning. The components are dismantled, cleaned in a wash bay, sandblasted, recoated – and, in some cases, rejected. The cleaning process reveals which parts are still usable and which are only good for recycling. The next step is to remanufacture the functional components and replace any worn parts.

Following remanufacturing, MAN installs the components and tests their functionality. The quality standards are high, with MAN Genuine Parts ecoline products covered by the same warranty conditions as new parts – but at prices up to 50 percent lower. Here, economy and ecology go hand in hand.