Mitsubishi Fuso lays the foundation for electric commercial vehicles in the eLab

The commercial vehicle manufacturer intends to remain at the forefront of developments in electric mobility in the future. With the so-called FUSO Academy, the Daimler Trucks subsidiary has commissioned their retail-training department to establish an effective learning culture within the company. FUSO Academy is playing a decisive role in shaping the transition to electric vehicles.

Over 2200 days of classroom training for 8,500 participants took place in 2019 at FUSO Academy. The central goal of the academy is to enable autonomous learning anytime and anywhere. And so, the number of participants in the e-learning courses, at 41,000, far exceeds the number of in-person attendance days. Using its own Learning Management System (LMS) "FUSO Horizon," the academy has been making its core business more flexible for several years now: providing training for the dealers and employees in the Mitsubishi Fuso network.

Traditionally, FUSO Academy's retail training courses consist of face-to-face training and workshops in the five Japanese and six international training centers. They have already partially digitized the traditional F2F offering through various online-based channels and expanded it to include interactive eLearning, virtual webinars, training videos, and other communication channels. Electric transportation is now driving this change even further in the area of hands-on training.

Mitsubishi Fuso prepares dealers and workshops for electric vehicles in the eLab.

The commercial vehicle manufacturer is convinced that electric vehicles are the future of the industry and has underlined this by introducing the "eCanter" model. With its all-electric light duty truck, Mitsubishi Fuso is now the market leader in this segment in key regions such as the EU and Japan. The vibration-free, low-noise and easy-to-drive truck is winning over more and more Commercial vehicle owners of the advantages of electric vehicles. FUSO Academy has therefore developed a training program especially for the eCanter and equipped its own “eLab”: This facility features electric vehicle training courses that are intended to qualify employees and dealers in the field of high-voltage safety, and to train them in the maintenance and troubleshooting of electric vehicles. Moreover, FUSO Academy’s efforts also prepare the company for more electric vehicles developed by Mitsubishi Fuso.

In the eLab, FUSO Academy uses the training systems from Lucas-Nülle.

"Our international training manager was able to gain experience with the Lucas-Nülle concept for electric vehicles at Daimler Trucks and expressly recommended the equipment to us," explains trainer Eric Weisser, explaining how the collaboration between Fuso and Lucas-Nülle came about. "We then met with Lucas-Nülle at our FUSO headquarters in Japan and together we developed a plan for equipping the eLab. I gained my first experience with the LN equipment during the installation and setup of the new eLab," reports Weisser. In several training sessions, he and his colleagues were given an overview of the possibilities of the training systems and how to use them digitally with LabSoft.

"We greatly appreciated this supportive customer service, and we are enthusiastic about the various methods we can now use to conduct EV training in a completely safe environment.”
Eric Weisser, Trainer

In the future, the company's electric vehicle training will be expanded even further. In the next step, the eLab will now be integrated into the digitalized learning world of "FUSO Horizon". "The fact that Lucas-Nülle is providing the learning content for each training module digitally helps us a great deal in this respect," reports Weisser and explains: "We will use it as a comprehensive resource that we can further tailor to our specific vehicle-related needs."

In addition, FUSO Academy uses the software's networking capabilities to manage the support of the training participants as well as the exams.

With the CarTrain for electric vehicles, trainers can also teach other core topics of the electric vehicle such as motor control, voltage and frequency conversion or, of course, high-voltage safety. "It's a wonderful added value that we can now safely measure the HV insulation resistance and practice the shutdown procedure before we move on to the actual electric vehicle in the workshop," says Weisser and underlines: "We therefore integrated the LN equipment into our Smart Workshop concept and are thinking about implementing it in all our FUSO Academy training centers".

Although the current situation has slowed FUSO Academy's efforts in this regard, the training provider does of course have an answer to this crisis. In order to provide strong support for its business partners, FUSO Academy has adapted both the classroom training courses with appropriate concepts and, above all, significantly increased the scope of online offerings.

"Lucas-Nülle offers us a well-designed and complete software and hardware package for this purpose.We now want to further expand the use of the equipment."
Eric Weisser, EV-Specialist