IAA Transportation 2024: Bosch advances with software and technology for trucks and vans

Global vehicle production is expected to remain stagnant in 2024 compared to the previous year. Assuming a strong final quarter, the company predicts a slight increase in sales at Bosch Mobility in 2024 despite a very difficult market environment. Bosch Mobility aims to achieve global sales of more than 80 billion euros by 2029.

A new solution for companies dealing with commercial vehicles

Bosch wants to leverage the enormous opportunities currently offered by the growth in global freight transport and the transition to alternative drive systems. To this end, the company will reorganize its commercial vehicle business in the mobility sector. Starting in January 2025, under the leadership of Jan-Oliver Röhrl, Executive Vice President Commercial Vehicles and Off-Road Vehicles, the company will combine important competencies in a new business unit, combining systems development and product and portfolio management for trucks and off-road applications. “We are convinced that this new setup will benefit our customers – and that we will work together even more successfully as a result. Together, we want to make commercial vehicles even more efficient and safer on the roads,” said Röhrl at IAA Transportation 2024.

To achieve this, Bosch is focusing on drive system diversity and technology neutrality. According to internal forecasts, the company assumes that globally around 20 percent of all newly registered commercial vehicles weighing more than six metric tons will have a battery-electric drive system in 2030, while fuel cells will have a share of around 3 percent. By 2035, every third truck will have a battery on board, and every tenth will be equipped with a fuel cell. At that point, the hydrogen engine will also be on the roads, albeit in smaller numbers. One thing is clear: freight transport can only become electric if the right infrastructure is implemented. “We need a consistent and faster expansion of charging stations for electric vehicles and hydrogen fueling stations in Germany and Europe,” Heyn said.

According to Bosch, the different drive system technologies do not compete with each other – quite the opposite: the diversity allows manufacturers to decide on the optimal solution for each application. This means that Bosch is not only further developing drive system technologies for batteries, fuel cells and hydrogen engines, but is also making modern combustion engines even more efficient. And especially considering how large the existing vehicle fleet is, synthetic fuels can also play an important role in mitigating climate change.

Assistance systems for commercial vehicles are in the fast lane

At the IAA Transportation, Bosch is presenting its ideas, innovations, and solutions for modern freight transport. But even far from Hanover, Bosch technology is already changing the way we transport goods from A to B. In China, for example, Bosch’s e-axle for heavy-duty commercial vehicles weighing between 18 and 49 tons has gone into series production – with a fully integrated electric motor, gearbox, clutch actuator, inverter, and differential. The solution is suitable for both battery-electric vehicles and vehicles powered by fuel cell modules. The first test vehicles with hydrogen engines are now on the road in India. Bosch supplies them with injection systems, sensors, tank valves, and control units, including software – all key components of a hydrogen drive. And in the US, Bosch and FirstElement Fuel are working intensively on something called a cryogenic pump, which will be launched for the first time in California in 2025. The new pump will make it much easier and, above all, faster to refuel commercial vehicles – with enough hydrogen for 1,000 kilometres of driving in just ten minutes!

The assistance systems business also remains an important part of Bosch’s commercial vehicle strategy. According to an internal Bosch study, around one in eight truck accidents can be avoided with a lane-keeping system – it not only saves lives, but also avoids property damage costs for transport companies. Another key assistance system from Bosch is the electronic horizon, which enables fuel- and emission-efficient truck driving. It collects data on, for example, topography, curve radii or road signs and intelligently adjusts the vehicle speed to the surroundings, including by using the truck’s kinetic energy. The system works on both highways and in city traffic. In the case of commercial vehicles with combustion engines, it can reduce fuel consumption by up to 5 percent and thus reduce CO2 emissions. Commercial vehicles with electric drive have better energy efficiency, which gives them a longer range. More than one million vehicles are already equipped with Bosch’s electronic horizon system.

Trucks and vans also need to be modernized

As the automotive industry moves towards software-defined mobility, commercial vehicles are also facing a paradigm shift. The growing number of connected services and fleet management solutions means that trucks and vans need to be upgradable, similar to the passenger car sector. The golden rule here is to have fewer vehicle computers, which in turn reduces the complexity of the vehicle’s electrical/electronic architecture. Intelligence is currently spread across several different computers, but in the future it will be concentrated in just a few vehicle computers. Bosch supports manufacturers in the transition from hardware-defined mobility to software-defined mobility, including in the commercial vehicle sector, while also offering a wide range of corresponding software solutions and services.

Bosch’s digital services platform for logistics, called L.OS, identifies and solves specific challenges facing the transport and logistics industry. The company collaborates in this area with Amazon Web Services, among others. At the heart of the software ecosystem for shippers and carriers is a marketplace that offers centralized access to digital solutions from different providers for all aspects of logistics operations – all in one seamless experience: drivers, transport and fleet management; route planning and parking; financial services and supply chain transparency.

Bosch’s connectivity solutions also help mobility and logistics service providers to use their vehicles as efficiently as possible and minimise downtime. The technical basis is a Bosch control unit that can be installed in any vehicle, regardless of manufacturer, giving the fleet operator access to operational and diagnostic data and thus a wide range of data-driven services. For example, the Retrofit Efficiency module (remodul) function recognises the route a truck is travelling and slightly adjusts its speed according to empirical values ​​stored in a central database. This can reduce fuel consumption by up to 4 percent – ​​an attractive cost benefit for fleet operators. Vehicle Health, on the other hand, records both standard and manufacturer-specific fault codes in the vehicle and evaluates them in the cloud. As a result, impending problems can be identified at an early stage and presented in a comprehensible manner, so that early servicing can be suggested, for example. This significantly reduces the number of unexpected breakdowns, making planning much easier for operators.