Allison Automatics Account for 65 percent of Medium-Duty Hino Truck Sales in Australia

The popularity of Allison automatic transmissions as an option in medium-duty trucks has seen major truck maker, Hino, declare that 65 percent of all of its new Hino 500 Series standard cab trucks are now ordered with Allison Automatics.

SYDNEY, Australia – The high uptake of the optional Allison fully automatic transmission in Hino’s medium-duty trucks sold in Australia exemplifies the changing truck market and the need to satisfy the demands of fleets operating largely in the increasingly busy urban areas.

According to Hino Australia’s manager of product strategy, Daniel Petrovski, the demand for Allison Automatics has been increasing and continues to grow.

“Customers are voting with their feet and switching to full automatics because there is no penalty in fuel consumption or performance. In fact the automatic accelerates faster in traffic situations and delivers better travel times in heavy city traffic,” said Petrovski.

Global trends point towards two-pedal operation with Allison being the preferred choice. This has been led primarily by operators not being able to get drivers who can or want to drive a manual truck, particularly for use in metropolitan areas.

“We did forecasts a decade ago which predicted that around 80 percent of medium duty trucks would be automatics by 2019, and it looks like we will come close to meeting that figure. The trend is continuing to grow in this direction,” said Petrovski. “Across all of our models there has been a trend towards automatics. The Hino 500 Series in particular has a high demand for automatics and it was a conscious decision to choose Allison. Vocational applications prefer a true automatic and Allison is the best solution, particularly in the 350 horsepower and below rating,”

“We’ve worked closely with Hino to match the six-speed automatic to their new 500 Series standard cab models, as we did in previous models,” said Robert Cavagnino, Manager, Sales and Marketing with Allison Transmission in Australia. “The performance is a great example of our close engineering collaboration.”

“Allison Automatics have a proven track record and deliver smooth shifts with uninterrupted power, and that has a lot of appeal for truck buyers in this market. The only true automatic is Allison. Other manufacturers pretend their two-pedal gearboxes are equivalent, but in reality, it’s not true. The increasingly difficult task of sourcing skilled drivers has meant many distribution fleets operating in urban areas have experienced added costs and reduced productivity that come with having to change clutches and other driveline components in manual trucks,” said Cavagnino.

The factory-fitted Allison Automatics in the new Hino 500 Series are filled with synthetic fluid, and Hino is quoting a service interval of up to 480,000km (300,000 miles) without even touching the transmission fluid — saving downtime, money and improving productivity.

Contacts
Jon Thomson
Thomson PR
jon@thomsonpr.com.au
+61 (2) 9938 6408
3/19 Sydenham Rd
Brookvale, NSW 2100
Australia

Holly Zhang
Allison Transmission holly.zhang@allisontransmission.com
+86 (10) 6468-6800, ext. 8818
Unit 1803 PICC Office Tower
No. 2 Bldg., No. 2 Jianguomenwai Ave.
Chaoyang, Beijing, China 100022

Oct 24, 2019

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Allison Transmission (NYSE: ALSN) is a leading designer and manufacturer of vehicle propulsion solutions for commercial and defense vehicles, the largest global manufacturer of medium- and heavy-duty fully automatic transmissions, and a leader in electrified propulsion systems that Improve the Way the World Works. Allison products are used in a wide variety of applications, including on-highway trucks (distribution, refuse, construction, fire and emergency), buses (school, transit and coach), motorhomes, off-highway vehicles and equipment (energy, mining and construction applications) and defense vehicles (tactical wheeled and tracked). Founded in 1915, the company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. With a presence in more than 150 countries, Allison has regional headquarters in the Netherlands, China and Brazil, manufacturing facilities in the USA, Hungary and India, as well as global engineering resources, including electrification engineering centers in Indianapolis, Indiana, Auburn Hills, Michigan and London in the United Kingdom. Allison also has more than 1,400 independent distributor and dealer locations worldwide. For more information, visit allisontransmission.com.

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SOURCE Allison Transmission Holdings Inc.