Electric delivery of freight and people to accelerate: Zetsche

Electric trucks, vans and even school buses are favoured by Daimler to help with delivery.

It’s about zero emissions and delivering some of the 65 billion parcels worldwide annually, Daimler AG management board chairman and Mercedes-Benz Cars head Dieter Zetsche says on Linkedin.

“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,” he says.

Logistics are a key driver of traffic in and outside of big cities, and the delivery trend is likely to accelerate with parcel deliveries possibly doubling within the next ten years alone, Zetsche says. “That’s why emission- and nearly noise-free trucks, buses and vans -are such a powerful lever to helping make our environment more liveable. And that’s why we are dedicated to bringing more and more of them to the market.”

Zetsche says Daimler was the first company to present the concept of a fully electric truck for urban distribution of up to about 23 tonnes. “The Mercedes-Benz Electric Truck showed what’s technically feasible – and we just kept going from there … “

The E-Fuso Vision One, a heavy-duty all-electric truck concept with a range of up to 350km and a payload of up to 10 tonnes was unveiled in October.

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

“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 1500 electric vans from Mercedes-Benz by 2020.”

Zetsche says it’s also important for his company to move people in a sustainable way.

“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.”

Zetsche says he welcomes and encourages all others to join the effort “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”.