Eaton’s announcement last fall that it would enter the automatic school bus transmission market with a dual clutch option heralded the arrival of a new competitor to Allison Transmission.
“It is good news for our industry to finally have a competitor in the automatic transmission offering,” commented Robert Pudlewski, STN’s technical editor and an industry maintenance and technology consultant.
Allison has owned the small and large school bus transmission segment for decades with its Pupil Transportation Series. For the school bus segment, Eaton focused on supplying valves to engine makers and providing the hybrid-electric drive trains for IC Bus and Thomas Built Buses. But with school bus market acceptance small at best for that alternative fuel, the OEMs announced last year they were stepping away from the market for the time being.
Eaton’s bread and butter has been manual transmissions and AMTs for the truck market. But since 2011, Eaton has worked on perfecting its dual clutch technology to allow for more efficient acceleration from a stopped position, even on up and down grades. Alison Thomas, Eaton’s global strategy manager, said the Procision makes sense as the company’s next-generation product because the widely accepted technology offers “significant” fuel economy advantages over torque converters, especially in low-speed applications such as school buses with frequent starts and stops.
“That’s where we really see a benefit, in a duty cycle where the torque converter is spending a lot of time unlocked,” she added.
While both transmissions offer fuel economy increases and handling advantages for drivers, the true test will come with serviceability.
“From a shop perspective, the real keys are normal maintenance requirements, anticipated service life and availability of repair facilities,” said Marshall Casey, the former fleet director for the South Carolina Department of Education who is now a school bus maintenance and training consultant.
Though Thomas would not disclose the conversations Eaton is having with school bus manufacturers, she said serviceability of the new transmission is a big selling point. Similar to Allison’s products, the Procision will feature a spin-on filter that can be easily changed without needing to drop the transmission. And if there were a need to do other more sensitive work, she said Eaton has that covered, too.
“The front pan and hydraulic controls are located at the bottom, which makes it easier to do more service while the transmission is still in the vehicle as opposed to dropping it,” she said. James Michaels, Eaton’s manager of global communications, added that with its upcoming launch this fall, the Procision would be compatible with front-engine buses, noting that a rear-engine option will be “coming in the near future.”
Meanwhile, Lou Gilbert, director of North American marketing and global brand development for Allison, said their customers could expect the same service they’ve grown to expect with the new FuelSense software. He also said that FuelSense does not impact serviceability, with the exception of the transmission control valve body included on the 1000 and 2000 Series. In addition, the control valve body is necessary for the “neutral at stop” feature that is standard
for the FuelSense Plus and FuelSense Max, he added.
“By packaging the formerly a la carte software features, we hope to make them easier for end users to specify at their OEM dealer, thereby increasing their use across a wide range of applications,” said Gilbert. “Simply stated, we expect FuelSense to save our users fuel and money.”
Pudlewski said he does not expect fuel savings to be enough to drive school-bus operator decisions on which transmission to choose. Instead, it will come down to the initial expense as well as the life-cycle costs of Procision compared to Allison when applied to Blue Bird, IC Buses and Th omas Built Buses. Eaton is promoting a $474 savings per bus per year based solely on lower fuel consumption. Allison, meanwhile, said pilot tests indicate annual fuel savings
ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per vehicle, depending on duty cycle. Gilbert said a Midwest transit but fleet is seeing a 5.7 percent fuel economy improvement with FuelSense.
Pudlewski noted that some operators might simply stick to what they know.
“Before the age of the lock-up torque converter and electronically managed systems, we had mid-range automatics that would not make it up some hills in New England and Mid-Atlantic areas, forcing the purchase of heavy-duty automatics or staying with manual transmissions,” he said, “Some operators will spec manuals just for that same reason.”
