At a recent media preview hosted at the Transportation Research Center (TRC) here, ZF Commercial Vehicle Solutions demonstrated how it is trying to keep it simple—even as the technological opportunities seem complex.

By combining the historical strengths of Wabco and TRW Automotive, both acquired by ZF in the last decade, the global supplier is positioning itself as a systems leader capable of elevating the trailer from a passive asset to a fully connected, active safety platform.

Dirk Wohlmann, who has moved into the role of head of the North American CVS group after leading the region’s engineering operations, outlined the coming full day of demonstrations for FleetOwner ahead of similar presentations for OEM partners and fleet customers.

With 30 years of experience starting with Wabco and its integration into ZF, Wohlmann brings a unique perspective to commercial vehicle architecture.

“For me, it’s always important that we see the overall systems,” Wohlmann explained. “Individual components and parts can only work to their best if they are integrated in a full system. If they are not integrated, they do not bring the best performance we want to see for safety, efficiency on the road, the driver experience, and fleet productivity.”

This holistic approach is the essence of ZF’s reintroduction of its comprehensive trailer portfolio here, aimed at showing OEMs and fleets that the "smart trailer" revolution is not a distant concept, but a suite of practical and proven solutions that can be deployed immediately.

With more to come.

A central challenge in modernizing trailer safety is the stagnation of regulatory baselines. Jason Paauwe, North American trailer sales lead for ZF, outlined the problematic reality: The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) mandate for trailer anti-lock braking systems (ABS) was established in 1998 and has not been updated since.

For true EBS and advanced autonomous driving functions to succeed, tractors and trailers must be linked by a standardized, high-speed data connector that goes far beyond the capabilities of the aging seven-pin connector and PLC lines.

FleetOwner sat down with Wohlmann and Paauwe to sort through the challenges of tractor-trailer technologies and mixed fleets and what's coming next.

The path to EBS and connectivity

While ZF continues the push to maximize utility from its ABS-based architectures in North America, both Wohlmann and Paauwe emphasized that electronic braking systems (EBS)—commonly referred to as "brake-by-wire"—represent the long-term future of trailer technology. (ZF refers to its system as iEBS.)

In standard pneumatic systems, the braking command travels from the cab to the trailer as an air pressure wave down a physical hose, resulting in a minor but measurable physical delay. EBS replaces this pneumatic signal with a high-speed electronic braking command sent directly from the tractor ECU to the trailer ECU, yielding near-instantaneous brake response times, shorter stopping distances, and superior vehicle-wide stability.

The primary barrier to widespread EBS adoption in North America is a fundamental difference in regulatory and operational models compared to Europe, where EBS has been the standard for decades.

In Europe, strict legislation mandates precise brake-force balancing between the tractor and the trailer, falling within a highly regulated tolerance band. EBS is required to achieve this dynamic balancing automatically.

In contrast, the North American market has historically relied on manual mechanical tuning and pneumatic controls for the highly cost-sensitive marketplace.

Additionally, North American tractor-trailer combinations operate under different electrical architectures. While Europe utilizes 24-volt systems, North America remains on 12-volt systems, though Wohlmann predicts a gradual shift toward 24-volt architectures between the late 2020s and 2030.

The most critical technical bottleneck, however, is tractor-trailer connectivity.

Wohlmann and Paauwe are actively engaged in the SAE and TMC standard committees to drive this transition, noting that there are currently three proposed connector designs on the table.

They emphasized the urgent need for industry-wide alignment on a single, open-source-style standard. Without standardization, the industry risks entering a state of "connector chaos,"  forcing suppliers to develop multiple proprietary interfaces and forcing fleets to manage incompatible mixed-equipment operations.

Wohlmann stressed that the ideal connector must be backward and forward compatible, ensuring that fleets can seamlessly pull older trailers while preparing their operations for the high-bandwidth data demands of camera systems, cargo-monitoring telematics, and autonomous driving.

But that’s easier said than done, Paauwe noted.

“This is a complicated topic because when you start to talk about these new ideas, everyone protects it with IP—so everybody has a hidden agenda,” he said. “You can join these [standards] meetings. They're supposed to talk about their new concept of this connector idea, and the first two slides are about their connector and the next eight slides are about the technology they're going to sell after they release this connector.

“So, we're trying our best to help influence those conversations. We're not monetizing the truck-to-trailer connector. We definitely have an enhanced influence because we do supply both the truck and the trailer market; we integrate with the OEMs on both sides. But, really, it's going to take an alignment from an unbiased, unmonetized source to get this done.”