Mem does it manually
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• Mercedes-Benz has quietly aowed to market pressure and s now offering a manual earbox option on its latest 1729 tractive unit, as an alternative to its EPS electropneumatic gearchange system. The manual option is intended for spot-hire rental companies and, says M-B UK, will have a "minimal take-up".
Hitting back at claims that its policy of fitting EPS to all of its new Powerliner 2 tractive units at 216kW (290hp) and above is "confused", Mercedes-Benz maintains that it "is not backing off EPS. We believe EPS works, and that's backed up by the fact that our tractive unit sales are up by 26% this year . . . there is no customer resistance to EPS."
Although the manual gearbox — a Daimler-Benz G Series 16-speed splitter — will be aimed primarily at spot-rental operation M-B UK has not ruled out making it available to general hire and reward hauliers, saying that it will "evaluate customer requirements". Acknowledging that there has been a "driver communication problem", M-B UK says: "Once people have got used to it they don't want anything else." The manual gearbox is a "delete option" with no additional cost, or reduction, against EPS.
EPS was introduced as standard by Daimler-Benz on its 1635 and 1644 some two years ago and has been generally well accepted. Soon after the launch of the new Powerliner 2 range, however, it decided to extend its use to the lower-powered 1729 — and it is in this vehicle that it has been most criticised.
When Commercial Motor roadtested the EPS-equipped 1729 LS (CM 13-19 October) we commented that the limitations of the system were highlighted when climbing steep hills, as the driver could not skip more than two-and-ahalf gears at a time on a sharp incline, making it difficult to change down quickly.
This idiosyncrasy was less noticeable on the more powerful 1635 and 1644 models we tested last year. M-B stresses that there are "no plans whatsoever to extend the manual option" further up the power range.