Author:focus-on-transport
MAN Truck & Bus has won the inaugural Truck Innovation Award for 2019 in recognition of its aFAS Level 4 automated driverless safety truck. The award was handed over to Joachim Drees, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, at the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hanover, Germany, yesterday. The new award acknowledges the enormous technological change that is evidenced within the field of commercial vehicles. It is awarded by the International Truck of the Year (IToY) jury, a group made […]
The new F-Max, produced by Ford Trucks, has been elected International Truck of the Year (IToY) for 2019 by a jury of 23 commercial-vehicle editors and senior journalists, representing 23 major European trucking magazines. The prestigious award was handed over to Haydar Yenigün, Ford Otosan GM, at the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hanover, Germany, on yesterday. With a winning score of 126 votes, the new F-Max heavy-duty tractor fought off the challenges posed by Scania’s recently launched L&P Series […]
While the announcement earlier this week by the Constitutional Court that marijuana is now legal in South Africa for private use may be the highlight of the year for some, there are a number of concerns and questions around regulation and control that still need to be addressed to ensure the safety of both users and non-users – particularly when it comes to road safety. This is the view of Rhys Evans, director at Alco-Safe, who suggests that testing for […]
For some time now, owls have been employed in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township to curb the prevalence of rats. Owl nesting and release boxes have been installed in five schools in the area since 2012 and one has been in Marlboro since 2006. Unfortunately, owls still carry a bad reputation among many cultures in South Africa, due to superstition and folklore. Earlier this year, after rescuing an injured owl in Alexandra from children throwing rocks at it, the Sandton Society for Prevention […]
Germany has a problem – more and more trucks are flooding the country’s freeways and highways. This has pushed up the number of serious accidents involving commercial vehicles. One result of this is that an increasing number of Germans would feel safer with fully automated, driverless trucks on the road. This is the outcome of a survey conducted by Bosch and Innofact AG in the lead-up to the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Hannover. The survey interviewed 1 068 people […]
Speaking at the recent National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) Automotive Conference, Lionel October, the director-general of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) commented that the DTI and the motor industry are now close to finalising the South African Automotive Masterplan, which will come into effect in January 2021 and run until 2035. October, who has been director-general at the DTI since 2011, said that both the department and industry were “99-percent there” in getting agreement […]
Having been inaugurated in July 2014, FAW South Africa’s Coega assembly plant has now celebrated the production milestone of 4 000 units. The R600-million plant was the first large-scale investment made by a China-based company in the Eastern Cape region and remains one of the largest foreign direct investments made in the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ). To date, a total of 16 different models have been assembled at the plant in Coega, ranging from the ever popular 8.140 to the […]
GAVIN MYERS recently put the all-new Volkswagen (VW) Crafter to work and came away very impressed I will forever be grateful for some of the perks associated with my job. At the beginning of August, VW South Africa offered FOCUS one of its new Crafters to test (you may have read our launch report in Issue 7) and, as luck would have it, that same month I was due to move house. With all the relevant dates arranged, a Crafter […]
Thanks to the rapid advancement of internet-enabled communication technology, the art of fleet management is evolving Fleet-management technology has evolved to become an integral part of a growing economy,” says Justin Manson, the sales director at TomTom Telematics for South Africa. “Before the mid-1990s when the first vehicle-tracking systems were introduced to South Africa for commercial use, fleet management was manual and largely paper-based. Drivers were entrusted to take exhaustive notes in log books, keeping track of routes, stops and […]
Truck drivers in Colombia are allowed to choose the number of hours that they work. They sleep in hotels, or hospedajes, and often drive vehicles built decades ago. Having only half a brake pad is no problem in this country, as long as the engine brake still works, writes RICHARD KIENBERGER. The reports about Colombia in the world’s media over the last couple of years focused mainly on cocaine, drug trafficking, or the civil war – which is regarded as […]
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