[CAT® MARINE] Cat C32B Marine Engine: An Inside Look

Sergio Tigera: Welcome to the Cat® Power Podcast, where we deliver powerful insights into the world of Cat Marine, showcasing the latest in technological advancements and highlighting the stories of the industry's most dynamic leaders. I'm your host, Sergio de Hara Now let's get ready to power up with the Cat Power Podcast. Welcome to the Cat Power Podcast. My name is Sergio Tigera. We're coming to you live from Miami, Florida. Wherever you may be, or wherever you may be listening from, you can catch each and every episode of the Cat Power Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you choose to listen to from. If you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe and share with a friend or colleague that needs to hear it. My guest today is one of Caterpillar's top experts in the marine engine platform area. He's a marine product strategy lead for the C32 platform. It's Mr. Allen Bowman. Welcome, Allen.

Allen Bowman: Morning, Sergio. Thanks for having me.

Sergio: Absolutely, buddy. Hey, so this is a very exciting time for Cat Marine, because of this new platform that you guys are getting into. We haven't been in this space in the past. Tell me a bit about why Caterpillar was thinking about we need to play in this space. Why is this horsepower engine platform area so important to you guys?

Allen Bowman: Right. Caterpillar has been in the marine industry for quite a long time. We've had a lot of success with our engines in the marine industry, but we realize in specifically the high performance space, we've gotten behind our competition a little bit in the past several years. We've gotten a lot of feedback from our customers. They're looking for more power from our platform and our engines. We tried to make a way to get back into the game here, get some more investment in those programs. The C32B was born from that decision. A couple of exiting things that we're going with the C32B that are coming out into the market now and in the near future that we're every excited to talk about.

Sergio: This comes in two horsepower options, right? Tell me a bit about that thinking.

Allen Bowman: Correct. There's an announcement that recently came out that we're putting a 2000 brake horsepower, or 2025 metric horsepower rating into the market. That's been very well received. Got a lot of good, positive feedback about that. It puts us at the highest power rating in the V12 class in the market today. So, puts us back in the front of the pack, so to speak. Very much excited about that. Then coming in the near future, we're going to be working on additional horsepower increase to get more power out of the C32. To take it even a step further and all the way up to 2,400 brake horsepower.

Sergio: Wow.

Allen Bowman: Very much excited about being able to put those two options in the marketplace.

Sergio: That's amazing, because it gives you a lot more horsepower, a lot more throttle, force to get up and at it when you want to. How are you guys getting more power density out of the same lead or displacement? How are you guys doing that?

Allen Bowman: Right. Yeah, as you mentioned, we're not changing the displacement of the engine, so in order to get more power, basically the easy answer is you have to put more fuel in the cylinder, a little bit more airflow, too. We've had to strengthen up the bottom end of the engine, so the crank shaft, the connecting rods, some of the internal components. We've made those more robust to be able to handle additional fueling in the cylinder, which creates more cylinder pressure, more stress on the engine. Been able to improve the strength of that on the bottom end, and that enables us to be able to get more power density out of the engine and be able to get those ratings that we're talking about.

Sergio: As a customer, let's say I'm an owner of one of these mega yachts, 80, 90, 100 foot. Hopefully someday I'll be out there on the water with a Cat engine in there. What am I going to sense differently? If I'm not an engineer, I own a business, some kind of company. I'm on my yacht trying out the new Cat in my engine, in my compartment. What am I going to sense differently in terms of the power, the sound, anything like that?

Allen Bowman: Yeah, that's a good point, too. You mentioned the sound. Two of the big things that we've heard feedback from our customer base on is Caterpillar, you need to get more power out of your engine, and your engines are a little bit noisier than some of your competitors. We've addressed both of those, and we talked about the power increase here just a minute ago. In terms of the noise, there's two things we're doing in that space. One is our unit injection fuel system that we use, we've made some enhancements to that as well to give us the additional knob to turn of being able to do a split shot injection, which it's a small pilot injection of fuel followed by a larger main injection of fuel. That allows you to reduce some of the mechanical noise, the combustion noise in the cylinder. We can leverage that at low speeds. When our customers are idling or trolling for fish, they'll have a little bit quieter ride than they have in the past with C32 engines. That's a big deal for us. We want to make sure that that's something we've listened loud and clear to those guys and tried to make sure that's captured here so when they're out fishing and having drinks on the deck, talking to their friends, they can hear conversations and be able to enjoy those times together.

Sergio: Right, right. One of the things you mentioned was reliability. Now, some companies out there define themselves by certain attributes, right? Some companies want to be the biggest. Some companies want to be the fastest. Some companies want to be the most nimble. I think when it comes to marine engines, I don't think there are any other attributes that are more important than quality and reliability when it comes to this, because you are miles away from land. You don't want to get stuck out there. Caterpillar puts a lot of emphasis on quality and reliability. Tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind this, because we do all Cat products, right?

Allen Bowman: Oh, absolutely. That's a great point. Caterpillar has always taken a lot of pride in putting out reliable products and our testing and validation practices that we put our engines through really back that up. If you look at the length of time it takes to deliver an engine program to the market, all the different engineers that touch the parts and put together test plans and validation plans in our laboratories, and putting these engines out in the field for early testing and getting that feedback and making design changes, that's a very rigorous process we put the engines through in testing to make sure that whatever we do in our lab, we we want to make sure we push the engines harder and more aggressively than hopefully what our customers are going to do. That way we make sure that they're going to get a good, reliable product at the end of the day.

Sergio: When I am an owner of a boat, obviously maintenance becomes a huge cost to me, right? I want to keep that down as much as possible. What have you guys done in terms of maintenance improvements to take this engine to the next level?

Allen Bowman: We're always looking at ways to try to reduce maintenance for our customers. The fewer times they have to touch the engine the better, right?

Sergio: Right.

Allen Bowman: We want to make sure their experience is at least amount of interaction as possible for them. We're always looking at ways to improve that, looking at ways to push oil change intervals, push filter change intervals. We have some things we're doing with high efficiency filters in that space. The higher power engine rating I mentioned earlier, we're looking at we're going to offer a large oil pan as option. If they want to go for a longer oil change interval extension and they've got the space for it, they can put a bigger oil pan in. It'll give them that leverage to not have to go in and do as much maintenance. As well as we have very good relationships with our dealers and our customer base. Our dealers do a great job of oil sampling, and really keeping an eye on how the engines are running. They're giving that good feedback to the customers, taking good care of them, letting them know if there is an issue that they need to address. There'll be a lot more automation of that coming in the future, I think, as we all work toward more digital strategies in that space and trying to leverage our capabilities in that realm as well.

Sergio: If I'm a boat builder, I want to make sure that my customer is ecstatic, because there aren't that many out there. I think of these very, very large yacht owners. The competition to keep these people happy is very high. How do I, if I'm going to re-power, or if I'm going to build somebody a new boat, what goes through the boat builder's mind when it comes to offering an engine? Because the customer says, "Okay, I don't know much about engines, what do you recommend?" How are we talking to boat builders and saying, "Here's why you should put a Cat C32 in this boat."

Allen Bowman: We're doing a lot of work right now with those builders that you mentioned, trying to get them all of our technical specifications, all the details about the engine, because we know it takes them months and in some cases, years to design and build a vessel. These vessels take a lot of time, especially on the custom ones. In order to give them the leg up on their customer base and get things in place where they need them, they need that information from us now to be able to plan out the next one to two years worth of builds and things there. Getting that foundation laid now is really a key important thing for us, as well as making sure they know what are the key features and benefits of this engine. One of the big things, especially if you're talking about the sport fish industry is all the boat owners and all the vessel owners want speed. They want top end vessel speed. Knowing they've got the power from our engine that's going to deliver that, and like you said earlier, and in a reliable manner, that's a very important thing for them to have in their back pocket ans they're talking with their customer base, being able to know what Caterpillar is going to deliver for them. A quieter package with power density is really a very important focus for us.

Sergio: They say a B stands for bragging rights, right? So that you can really push when you want to. How fast can you go on these? Up to how many knots?

Allen Bowman: It depends on the vessel design, obviously, but for some of these smaller sport fishing boats, I'll say probably in the 60 to 70 foot range, depending on how they designed the propulsion system, we're hoping that they'll be able to get up around 50 knots.

Sergio: Wow.

Allen Bowman: It's definitely going to be a game changer here.

Sergio: That's pretty quick. That's pretty quick. Is the yachting industry, through 2020, it's been a very tough year for many people. Other companies and other individuals have flourished. How has the yachting industry or fishing industry been this year in terms of demand? Has that been hit at all, or is it still pretty strong?

Allen Bowman: I'd say it's still pretty strong. We've seen some builders had to slow down some operations, I think, as the world of COVID unfolded throughout the year. As things have stabilized a bit in the industry, we've really seen that demand remain pretty strong for these types of vessels. They've even forecasted in the next several years it's going to remain strong. It's something that several of our key important customers are looking to even expand their sales in the next several years. It seems to be a very healthy and strong industry, even moving forward.

Sergio: Right, right. Another important thing, another important component of this whole purchase decision is getting support from the dealers. We know that Caterpillar prides itself on having the most extensive or comprehensive dealer network in the world. Does this also apply on the marine side, because we know crosstalk sure, but the fact that you can get parts anywhere within 24 hours is a tremendous advantage I would see.

Allen Bowman: Excuse me. Yes, absolutely. It's something that we're heavily counting on here as well, that our customers look for in terms of their total experience with Caterpillar and our engines as part of that package. The dealer support and the technician supports that they provide, get to the boat, fix the issues, do the regular servicing. As everyone probably knows, these boats don't exactly stay in the same spot all the time. They'll travel from one port to the next, spend the summer in North Carolina, go down to Florida for the winter. They're not always at the same location where they're going to have the same person servicing the boat every time. Caterpillar's got dealer locations all around the world that are always just a phone call away and getting somebody out there to your vessel that knows the engine, that knows how to service it. Going to take great care of you. That's something that we certainly lean heavily on and that our customers expect.

Sergio: Allen, take me behind the scenes a bit within Caterpillar. Let's pull the curtain back, and as an outsider looking in, they see Caterpillar. What is it like to work there? What is it like to be amongst some of the top engineers and the brightest minds in the world coming up with some of these very cool, innovative products and technologies and so forth? What's a typical day for you like?

Allen Bowman: It's a very exciting time I think to be at Caterpillar. Going back to some of the discussion about what we do for making sure these engines are reliable, a lot of that design work and validation work I mentioned, there's many, many people that touch even a small component of the engine. They all have that sense of pride, that sense of wanting to do a great job and really deliver for the customer, that we all carry with us as we do our day to day job. That really, being where I'm at, seeing a little bit more of the customer facing side here with some of the market feedback and information that we take from the market and feed it back to our engineering teams to do those design changes and validation work, it's very evident to me that when we put these products out to market, all the way from the top down, there's so much focus for these guys on making sure they deliver a great product and really make the customer's life easier, make their job and time to enjoy the boats that much less worry free knowing that the engines they've got on board are going to deliver for them. Yeah, I'd say it's certainly very rewarding from that standpoint. Yeah, definitely a lot of work that goes into it.

Sergio: You're seeing something from inception, from idea form all the way to in the water. That's got to invoke so much pride and just to see it happening... bringing your baby up from design to actual product, right?

Allen Bowman: Yeah. It's good, too, that now as we're starting to get more into our... getting ready for product launch and getting into the marketing phase, that we can start to see some of the tangible benefits of that. As you start to see some of the marketing information show up in social media, we have a demonstration engine that we've made available to see from some of our dealers and key customers. Seeing the actual engine physically there now, it gives people a good sense of accomplishment and feeling, hey this is real and it's coming in a sense there. So yeah, absolutely.

Sergio: Especially because the boat shows are canceled because of COVID, so it's good to go out and see this. You can check this out at one of your local dealers when it comes around on tour. The C32 tour. We have more power, so power density, more horsepower overall, quieter... much lower noise so it's easier when you're drinking your martini or your beer and hanging out with the boys. So inaudible engine. It's very exciting. When is it going to be available on the market?

Allen Bowman: The 2000 horsepower version, or the 2025 metric horsepower, that one was recently announced as available to order today. You can order that now. Those first units will start shipping early next year in 2021. That one's right around the corner. Then for 2400 brake horsepower, we'll be placing some early, we call them pilot units, out in the field early next year as well, probably before the end of first quarter. That one's going to be, in terms of its ability to order, officially it'll be available probably toward the end of next year. Then those first production units will ship early 2022. That ones still a bit, about a year away or so, but it's coming right behind the 2,000 horsepower.

Sergio: Nice, nice. We got a visual here of the 2,400. This is very exciting. Step us through this real quick as we play this video here. Here we go. That's my yacht by the way.

Allen Bowman: Looks great. Yeah, this is our 2,400 horsepower version. It's got a lot of the same core changes I talked about earlier. More power, same package. So yeah, 25% power increase over our current 1,925 horsepower today. Acceleration here we're talking about is enabled by a three turbo sequential system. Much better acceleration than we have on today's engine. We talked about the lower noise with the unit injection fuel system and the split shot capability, the IEPA two to three recreational IOM 2, IOM 3 switchable emissions. Going back to the validation here, 35,000 hours of testing on those core changes. That's not just marine. That's across all of our applications this engine will go into. That's certainly something that's very important as we look at taking those changes and putting them into production now on the 2,000 or 2025 horsepower rating. What allows us to do that is all the validation and work we put into those core changes that apply to the machine applications and electric power applications. They all use the same core now, so we can leverage that work to bring this to market that much faster.

Sergio: Allen, congratulations, buddy, on all the work and the entire team for bringing this beautiful engine out to the market. We're excited about it. I'm sure the boat builders and the boating community's going to be excited about it. Make sure to go around to your Cat dealer to check that out when it does come around, that engine. Thank you so much for being on, my brother. I appreciate it.

Allen Bowman: Sergio, great. Hey, thanks a lot. It's been a pleasure. I had a lot of fun. Thank you.

Sergio: Awesome. This is the Cat Power Podcast. Catch each and every episode, like I said, on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to it, and be sure to catch us on the next one. Make sure to subscribe and rate us. Thank you guys. Let's catch you next time. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow and rate us, and be sure to share it with a friend so that you can power up their life and their career.