Daimler Trucks & Buses is celebrating another milestone on the road to the electrification of its vehicle portfolio: customers worldwide have already covered more than seven million kilometers with battery-powered, locally CO2-neutral trucks and buses.
Positive customer feedback and findings from intensive practical tests with electric trucks from Mercedes-Benz, FUSO and Freightliner show that the electrification of road freight transport is already feasible today. In addition, the electric city bus Mercedes-Benz eCitaro is already in series production since 2018 and in customer use in various European cities.
As part of its electrification strategy, Daimler Trucks plans to offer electric vehicles in all its main sales regions by 2022: from the FUSO eCanter in the light-duty segment, the Freightliner eM2 in the medium-duty segment, and the Mercedes-Benz eActros and the Freightliner eCascadia in the heavy-duty segment.
With the all-electric eActros truck, which has a range of approximately 200 kilometers, Mercedes-Benz Trucks is demonstrating that heavy-duty distribution transport for urban areas can already be locally emission-free. Series production is scheduled to start in 2021.
The first practical applications of the Mercedes-Benz eEconic low-floor truck, which is based on the eActros, were announced in 2020 and are planned for next year. Series production is scheduled to start in 2022. The eEconic is mainly used as a waste-collection vehicle in urban waste-management. This is very suitable for battery-electric trucks due to the comparatively short and planned routes of about 100 km with a very high proportion of stop-and-go operation.
The light-duty FUSO eCanter is already in use with numerous customers in Japan, the US and Europe. The 100km range of the 7.49-ton truck covers the requirements of customers in urban distribution transport. With a fast charger, the charging time can be reduced to about one and a half hours.
In the US, the heavy-duty eCascadia and the medium-duty eM2 are currently undergoing practical tests with customers. The test fleet comprises 38 vehicles in a variety of applications including regional and local distribution, food distribution and parcel delivery. The vehicles have a target range for series production of up to 370 km (eM2) and up to 400 km (eCascadia). Series production of the eCascadia is scheduled to start in mid-2022 and of the Freightliner eM2 in late 2022.
The all-electric Mercedes-Benz eCitaro is based on the Citaro urban bus and is the first and only fully-electric urban bus to be developed and manufactured in Germany.
Daimler Trucks has the ambition to offer only new vehicles that are CO2-neutral in tank-to-wheel operation by 2039 in Europe, Japan and North America. By the year 2022, the vehicle portfolio in the main sales regions of North America, Europe and Japan should already include series-produced vehicles with battery-electric drive. In the second half of the 2020s, Daimler Trucks plans to add electrically powered fuel-cell trucks running on liquid hydrogen to its series-production portfolio. The ultimate goal is CO2-neutral transport on the roads by 2050.