Daimler goes all out on autonomy and electric trucks

Daimler Trucks has established the E-Mobility Group in the US which will develop electric trucks for market.

Daimler has also honed its focus in the driverless space, with the opening of the Automated Truck Research & Development Centre in Portland Oregon in the United States.

A 2.5 billion euro autonomy and electric program for 2018-19, will contribute half a billion euros toward the E-Mobility Group’s plans to have an “innovation fleet” of 30 electric trucks trialled with customers by the end of the year, with production slated for early 2021.

Fully electric Freightliner eCascadia and eM2, in heavy-duty and medium-duty classifications respectively, will be put to use in Portland, Oregon, in addition to Daimler Trucks North America using light duty Fuso e-Canters and Mercedes-Benz eActos already in the field.

The Class 8 eCascadia will put out 550kWh from its batteries, providing a provisional range of 400km, with an 80% recharge (320 provisional km) within 90 minutes.

Daimler Trucks’s head of Global Powertrain and Manufacturing Engineering, Dr Frank Reintjes, suggests competition, from the likes of Tesla and Nikola, is not as concrete as traditional internal-combustion manufacturers.
“We expect increasing demand for electric trucks and buses, and are also receiving these signals from our customers,” he begins.

“Only manufacturers who lead the field in both conventional drive systems and electric drive systems are able to offer convincing solutions, technically and business-wise,” Reintjes says in a statement.

“We know that only trucks and buses that fully meet the needs of transport operators will prevail in the market,” he adds.

The Automated Truck Research & Development Center will “develop and fine tune systems for automated driving”.