Dana to Introduce Hydrostatic Driveline for Telehandlers in North America

Dana Incorporated has announced the North American launch of a hydrostatic driveline for telehandlers.

The system’s modular architecture allows users to simply migrate to a hydrogen or battery-electric vehicle design. The new driveline will be displayed during the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2023 exhibition held in Las Vegas from March 14-18.

Dana’s new driveline is designed for telehandler applications weighing up to 12,000 pounds and includes a compact Spicer 312 dropbox for high-power hydrostatic motors.

This revolutionary hydrostatic dropbox operates as a continuously variable transmission with no torque interruption, delivering improved performance with accurate movements at low speeds, lower fuel efficiency, and an incorporated spring-applied hydraulic release parking brake.

The transmission is intended to be used in conjunction with the field-proven Spicer 222 front and rear heavy-duty axles, which each have a limited-slip differential and maintenance-free brakes. The entire driveline system has been improved for efficiency, noise, vibration, and harshness.

“Dana has more than 40 years of expertise designing and implementing hydrostatic transmission solutions for diverse applications across the off-highway market,” Dana Off-Highway Drive and Motion Systems senior vice president Jeroen Decleer remarked.

“Our new hydrostatic driveline offers operators an easy-to-use solution with increased performance and efficiency at low speeds. This makes it an ideal fit for use in the North American telehandler market and its modular approach gives customers the flexibility to make the transition to a zero-emissions solution.”

Dana enhanced the axles and driveline system for efficiency to enable a variety of topologies, allowing customers to retain the same driveline solution while adding a hydrostatic dropbox or an electrically driven design to support the industry’s move to zero-emission vehicles.

Dana offers a broad variety of hydrostatic transmissions, ranging from single- and two-speed dropboxes to shift-on-fly and powersplit transmissions, allowing clients to select the best solution for their unique vehicle’s duty-cycle requirements.