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Commercial vehicle producers in the United States will have another source for hybrid drive trains if the recent announcement of a partnership between ZF Friedrichshafen (ZF) and ISE Corporation comes to fruition. The companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding last week that outlined future collaboration on development, implementation and marketing of parallel hybrid drive systems. California-based ISE Corporation and Germany-based ZF will leverage their respective skills and resources to become major players in the commercial hybrid vehicle market.
The Memorandum of Understanding detailed a symbiotic relationship between ZF and ISE in selling parallel hybrid systems to North American customers. ZF will use ISE’s research facilities as well as its experience with integrating and selling commercial drive trains to reach American consumers. Every drive train from this collaboration will bear the ISE name, contain ZF parts and fall under the marketing aegis of both companies in the United States, Canada and Mexico. ISE’s connections in the American commercial vehicle market will open doors for partnerships that ZF would have been unable to create on its own.
The relationship between ZF and ISE makes sense for both parties due to their overlapping expertise. ZF has been successful in building chassis and drive components for delivery trucks, public buses and other commercial vehicles in Europe. ISE Corporation has quietly led the charge for gasoline, electric and diesel hybrids for commercial customers in the United States. The ZF/ISE collaboration shores up weaknesses in system integration, sales, service and other aspects necessary to deliver hybrid drive trains to American consumers. Once the North American market has been opened, ZF's connections in Europe can help ISE Corporation expand its reach across the Atlantic.
Automakers and fleet buyers will benefit in several ways from the ZF/ISE collaboration. The streamlining of operations for both companes in a niche market means that commercial consumers will get great drive trains from the start. ZF and ISE will be able to share R&D and factory resources to increase production scale while decreasing the cost per unit. ZF now has an entry point into the American commercial market while ISE Corporation can boost its profile until it becomes the continent’s leading provider of parallel hybrid drive trains for commercial vehicles. While the ZF/ISE partnership will not affect the passenger vehicle market, the ultimate effect of developing commercial hybrid systems will be a challenge to competitors to introduce cheaper, more efficient drive trains in all market niches.
