Long-headed truck, middle rear drive, European standard, user demand, safety difference.

"Optimus Prime" is the main element for China card friends to realize American trucks. The American tractor head with super-long front and super-large driving really looks terrible and seems to be safer. However, it seems that only American truck heads use the "front and rear drive long head design" internationally, and flat-headed trucks are dominant in European and Asian automobile markets. Why? The answer may be somewhat unexpected: capacity demand.

Railway transportation in the United States is not the main force of land transportation, but the core of carrying land transportation is road transportation. Therefore, the requirements for vehicle carrying capacity and power are very high. Referring to well-known OEMs such as Cummins, Navistar and Cabit, the diesel engines equipped for trucks have huge displacement and huge volume. If the engine is inserted under the cab in the layout of "center-mounted rear drive", the height of locomotive head will be very exaggerated, and the height limit of road and bridge is very high, so the main engine factory has to submit to the road design and adopt the long head design.

0 1 user requirements

In the United States, the length of the vehicle is not in the front. For example, the requirement of 17 meter is only for the length of flat plates or containers. In Europe and Asia, the total length of cars and trains is measured, and the requirement of 17 meter for the front of the car is also increased.

"One inch long and one inch strong" is a famous saying in the truck industry. An extra meter of containers can pull several tons of goods. Overmanned vehicles are mostly in the stage of lax management of overload and overrun. There are really some long trucks running on the road at this stage.

However, with the electronic (intelligent) landing of overload control and the serious accidents caused by overloaded vehicles destroying roads and bridges, such vehicles are rare in the real traffic field. Then, if you want to maximize the transportation space, you have to choose a flat car. It is very valuable to save one or two meters of space for pulling goods and "throwing goods". This is the reason why domestic heavy trucks are mainly flat cars. To put it bluntly, it is a helpless option for card friends.

02 security level

Look at the picture and analyze: suppose a flat-headed car collides with a long-headed car, there should be no dispute about which car is more seriously damaged! Flat-headed cars don't have any collision buffer. If they collide with a mini-car, they can still rely on the chassis and metal bumper to bear the impact. However, if they collide with trucks or buses with huge kerb quality, the result can be imagined.

Summary: Flat-headed trucks are not the ideal choice for safety, just like flat-headed vans are the worst in the field of passenger cars. However, from the perspective of transportation capacity and the control of manufacturing costs by car companies, flat-headed cars are the most suitable models for the current rules. Moreover, although the long-headed vehicles are advanced, they are doomed to be acclimatized, because even if the safety factor of such vehicles is higher, the fuel consumption will be much higher, and even the users will not accept the increase in operating costs subjectively.