Business
Daimler Truck eyes half of Europe sales from EVs in 2030
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
By Ilona Wissenbach and Andrey Sychev
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) -Daimler Truck, one of the world’s biggest commercial vehicle makers, aims for half of its European sales to come from electric trucks in 2030, the head of its Mercedes-Benz Trucks unit, Karin Radstrom, said on Monday.
Radstrom, who is due to take the helm of the whole group next month, seeks to sell as many as 30,000 electric trucks, or half of Daimler’s total vehicle sales in Europe, by the end of the decade.
“Hopefully we’ll be so good that we can do even more,” she said at a press conference during the IAA Transportation trade fair in Hanover.
Daimler Truck will start producing its first fully electric heavy truck Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 in November this year and has already received 2,000 orders for it.
Its outgoing CEO Martin Daum earlier on Monday said he sees no easing on the European truck market in the first half of 2025.
The group faces subdued demand after chips and other parts shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed up production costs.
The trucking industry also faces challenges to reduce pollution from commercial vehicles, while logistic firms, their main clients, are unwilling to pay more for electric trucks as the charging infrastructure is still far from complete.
For Daimler Truck’s technology chief Andreas Gorbach, the European Union’s 45% carbon emission reduction target by 2030 seems hardly achievable with the current pace of charging infrastructure development in Europe.
He suggested that the targets should instead be coupled with the pace of infrastructure development and would be revisited every year depending on progress.
“In the past, somebody had to build the highways to have trucks on them… and the highway of the future is the charging infrastructure,” Gorbach said.
“Now it is the time to switch gears, otherwise it becomes unrealistic,” he added.
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach and Andrey Sychev; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
An electric truck is a commercial vehicle powered by electric motors instead of traditional internal combustion engines, reducing emissions and reliance on fossil fuels.
Sustainability in transportation refers to practices that reduce environmental impact, such as using electric vehicles, improving fuel efficiency, and enhancing public transportation systems.
Production costs in the trucking industry include expenses related to manufacturing vehicles, such as materials, labor, and overhead, which can be affected by supply chain issues.
Charging infrastructure refers to the network of stations and equipment needed to charge electric vehicles, essential for supporting the widespread adoption of electric transportation.
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