Zero emission and 65 billion parcels: Why we are pushing electric trucks.

Some weeks ago Bloomberg wrote the headline “Daimler Steals Tesla Thunder With Heavy-Duty Electric Truck”. Of course, we do enjoy reading a headline like that. But let me point out here that it’s by no means about stealing thunder. Instead, it’s about adding some. Because our common goal is to add as many sustainable mobility and logistics options to the mass market as possible. And that’s what we do.

Logistics are a key driver of traffic in and outside of big cities. Some 65-billion parcels are delivered the world over every year. And as we all know from our personal shopping habits this trend will likely accelerate in the future. Estimates see the amount of parcel deliveries doubling within the next ten years alone. That’s why emission- and nearly noise-free trucks, buses and vans are such a powerful lever to helping make our environment more livable. And that’s why we are dedicated to bringing more and more of them to the market.

Moving freight, moving people.

More than a year ago, we were the first company ever to present the concept of a fully electric truck for urban distribution of up to 25 tons. The “Mercedes-Benz Electric Truck” showed what’s technically feasible – and we just kept going from there …  

This October, we unveiled our “E-FUSO Vision One”: a heavy-duty all-electric truck concept with a range of up to 350 kilometers (about 220 miles) on a single charge and a payload of up to 11 tons.

With the “FUSO eCanter” we already have a fully electric light-duty truck on the road that specializes in short-distance and inner-city delivery. Among our first customers in the U.S. is UPS.

And to get even closer to last-mile delivery and right up to people’s doorsteps, we are also working on fully electric vans. We have partnered, for example, with Hermes logistics, which is going to upgrade its delivery-fleet with 1,500 electric vans from Mercedes-Benz by 2020.

Daimler is making significant progress in the process of electrifying the entire supply chain. We are a leader in developing sustainable and locally emission-free logistics. Yet we won’t stop at delivering cargo. It’s just as important for us to move people in a sustainable way. 

Last week we also introduced an iconic, all-electric yellow school bus from our partners at Thomas Built Buses. We call the bus “Jouley”. Jouley will be ready to silently and safely take kids to school starting in 2019. Even earlier, in late 2018, we are going to launch series-production of our all-electric city bus “Mercedes-Benz Citaro E-Cell”.

All of these examples go to show: We are dead serious about building momentum and adding some thunder to the silent revolution of future logistics. And we are already well down that road. I welcome and encourage all others to join our effort and add some thunder and impact of their own. Because we believe: sustainable logistics can really make a big difference for the environment as well as for the quality of life in our cities. And we thrive on competition!