An eActros is revealed at the Mercedes-Benz truck plant of Daimler Truck AG on Ocotber 7, 2021.
Uli Deck|image alliance|Getty Images
The Daimler Truck CEO has actually mentioned the obstacles and chances his market deals with in the years ahead, as competitors warms up and efforts to establish zero-emission offerings deal with obstacles associating with cost.
In an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe” Friday, Martin Daum discussed the present scenario when it pertained to the expense of energized trucks, highlighting that a variety of elements remained in play.
“The first truth is, in heavy duty commercial vehicles you need such a huge amount of energy, meaning you need such large batteries, that such a truck always will cost significantly more than a combustion engine powered truck,” he stated.
“The savings come if the price for green, renewable energy drops and the cost for emitting CO2 rises and then out of that equation you might get a cost parity, or in other … cases road transportation will become more expensive.”
Despite the above, Daum stated the producer needed to go “straight forward to zero-emission transportation.” It’s formerly set out prepare for zero-emission lorries to represent “up to 60% of sales” by the year 2030.
The electrification of long-haul, durable trucks postures its own set of special obstacles. The International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook for 2021 has actually explained long-haul trucking as requiring “advanced technologies for high power charging and/or large batteries.”
Daimler Truck’s concentrate on zero-emission innovation will put it in competitors with business like Tesla and Geely, which are likewise establishing electrical trucks. Daum was bullish about the future, nevertheless, informing CNBC Daimler Truck was “the pioneer in electric trucks.”
“We deliver, we don’t announce … we just launched our all-electric heavy duty truck in Europe, the eActros, a couple of weeks ago,” he stated. “But that was a launch, not an announcement.”
“So how does our technology stack up to the others? We first need to see the trucks of the others to then evaluate the technology.”
Alongside battery electrical lorries, Daimler Truck is likewise concentrating on what it refers to as “hydrogen-based fuel cell electric vehicles.” To this end, it is targeting a network of 150 refueling stations and 5,000 “heavy-duty hydrogen trucks” by the year 2030.
In his interview with CNBC, Daum was inquired about the dispute in between battery electrical and hydrogen fuel cell. “We go for both because both … make sense,” he responded, going on to describe how various innovations would be suitable in various situations.
“In general, you can say: If you go to city delivery where you need lower amounts of energy in there, you can charge overnight in a depot, then it’s certainly battery electric,” he stated.
“But the moment you’re on the road, the moment you go from Stockholm to Barcelona … in my opinion, you need something which you can transport better and where you can refuel better and that is ultimately H2.”
“The ruling is not out, but I think it’s too risky for a company our size to go with just one technology.”
Daum’s remarks come as Daimler Truck gets ready for a prepared listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in December.
