At the Work Truck Show, Allison Transmission announced a new Vehicle Environmental Test Center in Indianapolis and that the new Mack medium-duty trucks will have Allison transmissions as standard.

The official opening of Allison's Vehicle Environment Test Center will take place July 8. Allison said the VET will enable it and its OEM partners to bring new technology and products to market faster and more efficiently.

The 60,000-square-foot building will house two environmental chambers capable of simulating a broad range of environmental conditions and duty cycles, including temperature extremes, grades, altitudes and other on-road conditions.

The center will house a hot soak chamber, a cold soak chamber, and two chassis dyne-equipped environmental chambers. The capabilities include temperature extremes from 54 degrees below zero to 125 degrees and altitude up to 18,000 feet, plus grades and other on-road conditions.

By using this test center, Allison said, it and its OEM partners will be able to accelerate development and validation of conventional powertrains, alternative fuel vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and fully electric vehicles for all aspects of performance—including emissions and fuel economy. The center is capable of accommodating most commercial on- and off-highway and wheeled defense vehicle applications.

Allison said the VET breaks the seasonal dependency of the product development cycle. It eliminates Mother Nature and other variations in fuel economy and performance testing by providing vehicle-level controlled laboratory conditions. The center can simulate any temperature, any road and any location, on any day all in one location. But the real pay-off, it said, is taking the reliable and repeatable data produced in the VET and driving those correlations back into models and simulations to create more sophisticated virtual product development.

When not in use by Allison, it will be available to external parties to support testing and certification needs. All testing is conducted in a manner ensuring customer data is secure and confidential.

Mack MD Makes Allison Standard

Allison's 2000 Series automatic transmission will be the standard spec for the new Mack MD series of medium-duty trucks. The company said the transmission offers advantages for medium-duty fleets such as FuelSense 2.0 with Dynactive shifting, in dry van/reefer, stake/flatbed, dump and tanker applications.

“Mack’s decision to equip their new MD truck with the Allison 2500 helps Mack meet customer demand for a durable, dependable medium-duty truck,” said Rohan Barua, vice president, North American OEM sales, Allison Transmission. “These trucks are versatile and we appreciate Mack’s confidence in Allison as the 2500 delivers in both fuel efficiency and superior performance for a variety of applications.” The 2500 Highway SeriesTM will be the standard transmission, and a 2500 Rugged Duty Series will be available for applications requiring a power take-off (PTO).

Mack is showing for the first time in public the Mack MD Series at the NTEA Work Truck Show in Indianapolis, March 3-6. The MD6, a Class 6 model, has a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 25,995 pounds. The MD6 will not require a Commercial Driver’s License to operate for non-hazardous payloads. The MD7, a Class 7 model, has a GVWR of 33,000 pounds. Production will begin in July out of Mack’s Roanoke Valley, Virginia, manufacturing facility.