Electrified truck and bus line-up from Volkswagen

Volkswagen will spend NZ$2.3 billion on developing electric power trains for its trucks and buses during the next five years.

It will also use autonomous driving and cloud-based technologies.

VW executives presented new electric truck and bus initiatives during the company’s ‘Innovation Day’ in Hamburg.

The group, which includes MAN, Scania, Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus, and RIO, has set a goal of increasing efficiency and improving environmental performance in transportation, and making it safer.
Volkswagen Truck & Bus is focusing on automated driving, connectivity, and alternative drive systems friendly to the environment.

MAN and Scania platoons are being tested across Europe. Working with DB Schenker, MAN will start testing the first platoons on the A9 highway between Munich and Nuremberg next year. Scania is also involved in a platooning project in Singapore, aiming to have platoons run on public roads between two port terminals.

Volkswagen Truck & Bus says many stages have to be reached before trucks that navigate congested urban areas autonomously can become reality. These range from automated protection vehicles in highway road maintenance and autonomous dump trucks in mines, all the way to driverless tractors in port terminals and platoons for long-haul transportation on the highways.

Changes need to be made to the legal framework and the requisite infrastructure needs to be built, the company says.

Fully autonomous Scanias are ready to work in mines, and the first commercial truck was presented to its new owner at the Innovation Day.

A driverless MAN safety vehicle for mobile road maintenance works will be used in Germany.

VW’s e-Delivery, an electric distribution truck, was also revealed.

The e-Delivery is a modern truck for urban logistics designed to improve sustainability in goods delivery. It will be built at Volkswagen Caminhões e Onibus in Brazil in 2020.

The company aims at a similar segment as recently announced electric truck efforts from companies like Tesla and Cummins.

“We plan to deliver the first nine fully electric trucks to our customers in Austria by the end of 2017 – including large supermarket chains, breweries and haulers,” VW Man Truck & Bus chief executive officer Joachim Drees says.

“We will be launching the first small set of vehicles on the market at the end of 2018.”

The company also confirmed plans for “series production of electric buses due to start before 2020”.

An eCrafter van with a range of about 200km will be shipped to selected customers by the end of 2017, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles chief executive officer Dr Eckhard Scholz says.

The VW I.D. Buzz Cargo, a compact electric van, is also being developed.
It’s another version of the electric microbus (Kombi come-back) due to enter production in 2022.

VW also plans to work on “liquefied natural gas (LNG)” systems with 1000km range, suitable for long-haul.

A joint open digital platform under RIO – it open cloud-based platform – will have its services available before the end of this year.

With MAN and Scania, Volkswagen Truck & Bus is ready to build on over 300,000 connected trucks as the basis on which to develop 650,000 connected vehicles worldwide.

Different ways to electrify heavy-duty trucks so their range and load capacity is suitable for long-haul traffic are being investigated.

‘E-road’ focuses on the use of overhead power lines with a test route for electric Scania trucks running in Sweden and more announced in Germany.