It’s an interesting time locally for truckmakers many of whom are finding new opportunities for their brands even as major changes loom over the horizon. IVECO Australia Managing Director Michael May is right in the thick of it.
Prime Mover: The IVECO S-Way has been well received in Europe. Do you anticipate a similar level of interest here?
Michael May: We’ve had a soft release of the product to the local dealer network. It’s been interesting from a logistics perspective to get clear timelines as to when the product was ready for the local market. We also wanted to have product available, so when people came to the Brisbane Truck Show and saw the S-Way for the first time they can go back to their dealer and buy one.
PM: Is supply the challenge everyone says it is?
MM: It’s a unique situation where the demand for product is high in Europe as our market share is growing there on the back of the quality of the S-Way product. The whole world market for transport equipment seems to be very strong and we’re still challenged by logistics and some component shortages, but there’s product flowing through locally now. We’re balancing the product we’re getting out of Europe with the way we want to grow here as well, because we are entering back into segments where once we’d been strong in the past, particularly with the S-Way in single trailer and B-double applications. Much of the driveline is shared with some previous models, so that’s an advantage and the local network has a lot of the tooling, technical knowledge, training and the parts that are needed. But we also want to make sure when we start running those trucks here and in New Zealand that the network has a good understanding of the product.
PM: Is IVECO in Europe demanding you sell more?
MM: It’s a little bit the other way at the moment. It’s us asking for more. From a sales perspective, what’s improved since we’ve spun off from CNH is the link we’ve got into Italy. Having us as a separate region and myself reporting direct to Luca Sra, the global head of IVECO Trucks, gives really fast alignment and understanding about what we require. We might not have had that before.
PM: Does the booming local market situation present some opportunities?
MM: Post-COVID, I think some of the reaction of the industry initially was the sky was going to fall down, and actually the opposite has happened. If we look at the competitive landscape and we try to understand where we want the products to be positioned, we’ve got clarity and we’ve refined what we offer so we can fit the market well, particularly in the single trailer and 70 tonne B-double applications. If you take a look at that segment there are some pretty impressive European products available. People who have never really had reason to necessarily change where they bought, now because of this current supply and demand imbalance, they think about what else is out there. And when you look at those competing products the safety and technology and fuel economy are really good. So to get someone to actually step out of one brand and into another brand, for us that’s a real opportunity.
PM: Can you comment on the new IVECO T-way model shown in Brisbane?
MM: The T-way is new for us, but not totally new as we had Trakker before and the T-way is the next generation. We don’t sell that many of them here in Australia and we sell more in New Zealand mainly in the fertiliser spreader application. With the new cab and increased capability, it will let us into other areas including fertiliser, mining, forestry, and we also see some opportunity maybe for heavier duty applications and we’re quietly confident about the potential for that off-road product.
PM: What are the plans for the IVECO eDaily displayed at the Brisbane Truck Show?
MM: That product is a validation unit. We are taking it steady by showing the vehicle, but we’re not yet exploring the market. It’s a showpiece really for validation and understanding how we equip our dealers and customers to charge, handle, operate, and own such a vehicle. Quite deliberately, we are going to spend at least the next 12 months with our innovation engineers because we see it as a real shift in the way we offer products. We’re still in the business of building trucks, and the eDaily is quite unique because, with a lot of the other vans their basic platforms come off a car-base so they have pressed-metal monocoque construction, whereas the eDaily has a true truck chassis. Everyone else has got lighter and cheaper and smaller, and we’ve retained quite a heavy-duty product which has now enabled us to have a good niche. As battery vehicles have developed it’s given us the modularity and we have the ability to put one, two or three batteries in. The eDaily product is second generation and it’s a real truck and its 7.2 tonne GVM means it can carry 4 tonnes of payload.
PM: Will the eDaily stack up financially against internal combustion vehicles of similar capacity?
MM: As far as affordability I don’t have an answer at this stage. That’s something we’re learning more about from Europe where IVECO has developed GATES – Green Advanced Transport Eco System – which is looking at the question of infrastructure and affordability. In Europe it’s a little different because there are government incentives, whereas over here without those strong incentives, it’s a little less clear how that’s going to translate to transport companies.
PM: What’s the feedback been like so far?
MM: The feedback has been really positive. Customers in Europe are continuing to order in big volumes and are finding ways to make it work. The eDaily has a pretty big motorhome customer base as well so it’s not just all about trucks.
PM: What’s happening with the IVECO electric heavy vehicles?
MM: IVECO has bought outright the joint venture we had with Nikola and that’s a good development for us as far as we are concerned, but we still share that S-Way cab with Nikola for the US market. We’ve also had some good discussions around hydrogen. It’s a new world now, autonomous driving is an opportunity in that space too and we’re looking into that at the moment and we’ve done trials in China and Germany. One of the traits of IVECO being a relatively smaller company is it can be nimble, and it focuses on partnerships to accelerate projects which I don’t think we could have done alone. It’s a critical time for our organisation and IVECO is on the cutting edge, which is good.
