i think you have got the wrong idea on this , this is not good for linde and will totally kill linde in the big truck market. It just gives the wrong impression to their customers. You have a customer looking for a couple of trucks say 3 5,000kg trucks and one 12,000 kg truck. they decide to look at three options Hystser hyundai and Linde. Linde is the highest priced truck but the sales person say's well you will save more over the life of the truck and have lower running cost as we are hydrostatic. Ther customer looks at this and say's OK that's agreeable. So the Hyster and hyundai reps say well Thats not really true to linde believe because on the 12,000 kg truck they have gone torque converter when they had a hydrostatic version the 1401, If Linde believe so much that hydrostsic is so good and they charge you more for this then why have they gone Torque converter. If Linde don't believe Hydrostatic is the best and they are promoting this with smaller trucks then why should you pay more when you can have a toeque converter range for less money.


Inside KION group there are many Brands and if KION which is ultimately Linde want to promote torque then they should have done this with another brand. This goes to show really Both KION and Linde don't understand the truck business. They might be Number two in the market on turnover soon to be number one but they don't really understand the market and this position was down to older management and the German and France markets.


Its like the HT 25 Linde truck from China it has done more damage to the Linde brand than any other product. The new 10 - 16 ton truck will only add to this.

KION have made some very big mistakes in big truck markets over the last three to four years closing merhtyr was a disaster and get out of big trucks like container handling was too when you have liebberr showing what can be done in Reach stackers.


KION will spend money to get to number One Toyota will spend money to keep there but this will only make both more acceptable to a competitor , Like apple samsung in mobile phones. like Uber to taxis. Will Toyota and KION be the Blackberry Nokia or the Black cabs of London