The long anticipated introduction of the Volvo I-shift gearbox onto the Mack Truck range has been unveiled at the recent Mid-America Trucking Show. The automated manual transmission will be known as mDrive and is to be introduced across the range on the US market.
The new two pedal automated transmission will initially be offered when coupled to the Mack MP7 and MP8 engines but should eventually become available with the 16 litre MP10 engine as it has with its sister brand, Volvo. There will be two 12-speed versions of the gearbox, one direct drive and the other an overdrive.
The introduction of this new sophisticated technology brings a number of other features to the Mack brand as the electronics used elsewhere in the Volvo group become available in the more traditional style trucks. These include something that will be labeled the MackCelerator, automatically dropping one gear when the truck requires quick acceleration when trying to overtake. A feature often known as hill start aid is to be called the Grade Gripper, using the ABS system to prevent the truck rolling back when taking off on a grade.