Rajiv Prasad: Sure. Maybe just in terms of buckets for capital investment, we’ve got some cut catch up things to do, which would €“ which we need to do into €“ in a number of our plants and also some of our development centers, which we’ll do in the second half of the year. As we launch the modular scalable trucks, we’re optimizing the footprint of our production capability. We want to have supply resiliency both for incoming material, but also for trucks. So we will produce very similar or the same trucks in multiple plants, so that needs to be done. And then we €“ it’s our product and technology plants as well as our commercial strategies that we are going to invest in. So those are the loose buckets. In terms of our technology, what we see €“ the difficulties that we see for our customers, productivity is definitely one.
And really there’s a huge amount of desire to understand their application to figure out what the trucks are doing, and therefore data is required to do that in terms of what the trucks are doing, who’s operating the trucks, are there any issues on the truck? And so our solution to that is to put telemetry on our trucks. So, you have real time information on what the truck is doing and who’s driving it and how it’s performing. The next area is really around safety. What’s happening at our customers is they get seeing a high turnover of operators and difficult to recruit operators. And so they’re moving towards less experienced operators and that’s creating issues in their application €“ in their operations. And that’s where our operator assist systems have come in.
They’re really backup, kind of become a bit of a support system for an inexperienced operator. Ensures that they’re not going to have that they €“ people around the truck can be detected, goods around the truck can be detected and the truck can be slowed down automatically. If trucks are passing each other, they can slow down to ensure there’s no collision, so a lot of support system that the operator keeps the truck in its stability triangle, where it’s the safest to operate. So the system does that in support of the operator. The operator is still responsible, but these support systems work behind the scene. And certainly customers are seeing huge benefit from this type of system. Now, the ultimate for operator availability is to automate trucks.
And we have a comprehensive automation program running. We have well over now 300 trucks, automated trucks running. And we are learning from that and we’re developing our next generation system, which we call internally developed automation or IDA. And those are getting ready to be €“ we are trialing those in our own facilities. And sometime in late 2023, early 2024, we’ll start to launch them and versions of those trucks will come out over the next three or four years. So automation is a critical part. And then of course, the work I’ve already said around these large trucks, putting fuel cells in electrification to reduce the carbon in a footprint of our truck is a critical part of our strategy. So whether that’s with advanced batteries such as lithium ion or with fuel cells that’s a huge transition and it’s a difficult transition for our customers.
We understand that. And so we are putting in all the infrastructure to help our customers transition from their current fuel system, whether that’s LPG, diesel or lead acid batteries to either advanced batteries or fuel cells. So those are the primary technology drivers. Now, there’s a lot of other work going on and we’ll talk about that in the future.
