Winnebago's New Driver Confidence Package Standard Features In All of Their Class A Gas RV's
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2023
- I was invited to Winnebago to test their new Driver Confidence Package, this collection of features will soon be available on all Class A Gas Motorhomes from Winnebago, and it includes Intelligent Adaptive Cruise, Pre-Collision with Active Braking Support, Lane Keeping Assist, Electronic Stability Control, Traction Control, Hill Start Assist, Auto High beams, Manual Shift with Range Indication. All these systems combined make up the new Driver Confidence Package and are intended to make you feel more comfortable driving a large RV.
The day began with me heading over to the Winnebago Facility and meeting up with John Millis, who is the Product Manager for all the Winnebago Class A gas and diesel pushers. John went over the menus of the new package which are all controlled by the keypad on the steering wheel. I was pleased to see that not only could you turn some systems on and off, but that you could adjust the sensitivity for some of them as well. I liked the amount of control you have over features to make them more or less sensitive, after all not everyone likes new tech and this Confidence Package will now be standard in all of Winnebago’s Class A Gas RV’s.
After John was finished showing me the features it was time to take the RV out for a test drive. Our test vehicle was a 2023 Winnebago Adventurer 36Z, so it has the new Ford F53 Chassis with 7.3 Liter V8 Engine, this engine replaced the engine that I have in my Winnebago Vista which was a 6.8 Liter V10. The advantage of the new engine is, it can put out more torgue at a low RPM, it also has more horsepower than the previous V10 engine. This was something that I could feel in the test drive right away during acceleration it was quicker and quieter while getting up to speed. Our test vehicle also had Sumo Springs and a Safe T Plus bar which can now all be added on from the Winnebago factory when you order your coach. We were in a 30th Anniversary Adventurer which has the Safe T Plus bar and Sumo Springs standard.
During the test drive Mark Lafferty joined us and drove a Winnebago Solis, which is a Class B van, the purpose for this vehicle was that Mark would drive in front of us and use the Solis to trigger some of the systems in the Adventurer. So, with Walkie Talkies in hand to communicate with Mark we were off! We set the intelligent adaptive cruise and with Mark in front of us he would slow down to see if the Adventurer would recognize the speed change and match the Marks speed, which it did and then when Mark sped up it would again match his speed until we reached the set speed of 60 mph. The system worked very well and I felt just this one addition would really make the overall driving experience more pleasant and relaxing as now all I was doing was steering. We also wanted to test pre collision with active braking support so we had Mark slow down to 5 mph the Adventurer quickly realized this and pre-charged the brakes and started applying them giving me plenty of time to step in and stop the RV before driving into the back of the Solis, Winneabgo either had a lot of faith in me or the new system, maybe a little bit of both. One thing of note is that the Adventurer will not come to complete stop on it’s own, you do need to step in and stop it, the system is designed to alert you and start breaking, giving you time to react and stop the vehicle completely.
Another feature that I thought was nice was the hill start assist, most of my RV driving is done while flat towing a vehicle and I thought this feature would be nice when starting out on a hill since it’s bad to roll backwards with a flat tow, it can bind up a tow bar. I found the manual shifting to be a nice feature as well, with this you would be able to put the RV in a lower gear right before hitting a incline instead of waiting for the automatic transmission to figure out that it needed to downshift after you were already into a climb, I think this will greatly improve up hill climbs, I tested this out, but this was done in Iowa where there were no significant grade change to fully get a feel for how the manual shift would work on a hill climb, but it did work great on flatish ground. One of the systems that I would probably find myself turning off is the lane assist, but like I said earlier that is the nice thing about this package, you can turn off what you don’t want to use. I adjusted the sensitivity of the lane assist to low and I still felt it alerted me of lane departing a bit too early or often, keep in mind the Class A RV is a large vehicle and pretty much takes up the entire lane, it really doesn’t take much to drift a smidge outside of your line, especially on a windy day. Maybe it’s something that I would need more time using to see if I would like it, because it does have nice feature where if it senses you going out of your lines too often it displays a coffee cup suggesting it’s time to take a break from driving.
Overall I enjoyed the driving experience. - Авто та транспорт
Hey everyone, thanks for watching. A quick note, the dash display does not flicker in person, it is only something that the camera picked up. I know for next time that I need to find a way to adjust my camera to prevent this from happening. Lesson learned on this one. Take care and safe travels!
Looks Great Kenny!
Glad you like it! I really enjoyed the test drive and hope I get invited to do more videos like this
Hi Kenny. Good to hear from you! Appreciate the class a feature update. Any idea when they will install airbags? I think even semi's have the now. Thanks, matt
Hey Mat, this is a great question. I can definitely ask them if they have any plans to, you would think by now we would have at least a driver side airbag in a Class A by now.
We have a class A similar to your Vista. It doesn't have any of these features. It almost makes me want to trade in my Winnebago for a new one. I'm surprised they're going to add this to all of the class A's. I would have thought it wouldn't include the cheaper models. I'm sure this will come at a premium. I wonder what they have in store for the diesels. Thanks for sharing the video.
I was surprised to hear that it's going to be standard to every class A gas as well, as of now I don't think they marked up the price of the base models, but that could change. I agree with you about wanting to upgrade our rig as well, but I keep in mind that they are always coming out with something new, so I'll always be behind 😆 Although I would really be happy to have that adaptive cruise
When will Winnebago give you guys a free one for all the promotion that you do for them. I don't want a class a that big but seeing your demo makes me think about maybe I should if they had one like that a little shorter. Thanks for the video demo
Hi New new, I will be sure to pass your comment onto Winnebago. I don't think they would just give us an RV to keep, but we might be able to talk them into giving us a small Class A to product test for a few months, and messages like this definitely help us to present ideas like this. Thank you and safe travels!
Wait up! You got this experience before TFL?😂😂
Lol, fun fact I tried to get Winnebago and TFL to collaborate on a towable, but the timing did not work out, on the plus side I was able to meet Nathan & Andrea in person and chat with them for a bit about their channel.
@@MovingForwardAdventures 😂😂😂
Are they offering this pkg on Winnebago DPs?
At the moment, it is only on their gas coaches. It's a package that they were able to get working with Ford.
@@MovingForwardAdventures thank you for the reply. You have some great tips in your vids.
Thank you!
What did you think of the engine.
I definitely liked it! The RPMs stay significantly lower than mine, even during acceleration. I remember during the test drive being surprised how quickly it was able to get up to 60mph without hearing the engine working hard to do so. Even when the engine does rev it has a much softer sound to it than our current V10, I would just say the tone of the engine is a more pleasant sound. When driving, it probably also helps that this engine is matched up to a 6 speed transmission where mine is only a 5 speed. Overall I could definitely feel it making more power at lower RPMs which surprised me since this RV is 8 ft longer than mine and heavier than mine even empty.
Does it have BLIS?
At the moment no, and I really hope it's something they will be able to bring to the class A soon. I did ask them about it, and it sounds to me it's a calibration challenge with there being so many different size Class A Winnebago's.