Generation Change in EcoLife Automatic Bus Transmissions
ZF Commercial Vehicle Solutions (CVS) division celebrates a milestone for its EcoLife product range: After selling about 250,000 EcoLife transmissions since its market introduction back in 2007, recently the last EcoLife transmission of its first generation has rolled off the assembly line. Aiming to continue ZF’s legacy of excellence in automatic transmissions for buses above 16 tons, from now on the production capacity will be fully leveraged to produce EcoLife 2 and EcoLife CoachLine.
“After producing both EcoLife generations in parallel since 2019 to enable a smooth transition for our customers, phasing out the first generation of EcoLife is an important achievement ensuring we serve all our EcoLife customers with state-of-the-art product performance.”,
stated Kleber Vinhas, Head of EMEA2 region at ZF’s CVS division.
ZF's Automatic Bus Transmissions leading the Global Bus Market since Decades
In 2007, EcoLife was introduced as a complete redesign to succeed ZF Ecomat, ZF’s prestigious automatic bus transmission. In response to evolving customer and market requirements leading to more powerful vehicle engines, CAN bus communication, and stricter emission standards, EcoLife came with higher efficiency, higher temperature resistance, and contributed to a fleet’s increasing cost focus with aspects such as longer service intervals.
However, EcoLife 2 comes with even more advantages and excellent driving characteristics to increase driver and passenger comfort. Among its full compatibility with the start-stop function in buses, it is more robust and reliable, with a reduced weight of 20kg. It also enables lower fuel consumption and a CO2 reduction of up to 3% compared to the first generation. Additionally, the digitalized service package helps to improve serviceability and aims to optimize vehicle uptime.
Further Supporting Comfort, Efficiency and Safety in Long-Distance Passenger Transport
Another product of the EcoLife product range is EcoLife CoachLine, increasing the comfort, efficiency, and safety of coaches. Offering automatic gear shifts without any tractive force interruptions and a low noise level, EcoLife CoachLine boasts highly economic fuel consumption, even in demanding topographies like mountain roads. It provides powerful acceleration through its gear shift strategy and deceleration via its retarder strategy.
The Preferred Partner for the CV Industry with Innovative Technologies and Proven Legacy Products
With the industry’s widest product portfolio for short and long-distance public transport, ZF aims to be the preferred development partner accompanying the transportation industry to become more sustainable, safer, and smarter.
"This transition from EcoLife to EcoLife 2 transmission systems is indeed a consequent next step in our future-oriented strategy to continuously improve our product performance to maintain the benchmark position of our transmission systems to our customers. As a trusted technology and development partner to the commercial vehicle industry, we are offering not only benchmark products for the conventional drivetrain contributing to continuously improving vehicle efficiency, road safety, as well as passenger and driver comfort, but also offering our electric drivetrain solutions such as CeTrax 2 dual to accompany our customers on the transition towards automated, connected and electric (ACE) commercial vehicles"
stated Dr. Jochen Witzig, Head of Transmission Systems at ZF’s CVS division.
