Groundbreaking days for Daimler Truck: One week after the shareholders voted to split the Daimler Group into a truck and a car giant, the first electric series-production truck rolled off the assembly line on Thursday.

Karin Rådström, responsible for Europe on the Board of Management of Daimler Truck, and the Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Economics and Transport Daniela Schmitt (FDP) opened the new production line for the eActros at the Wörth am Rhein plant.

The group employs 10,000 of its 100,000 employees in the city on the French border.

Boris Schmidt

Editor in the “Technology and Engine” section.

  • Follow I follow

Gustav Theile

Editor in business.

  • Follow I follow

Daimler Truck drives for a dual strategy.

“The battery is better suited for lower loads and shorter distances and the fuel cell for larger loads and longer distances,” said boss Martin Daum a week ago.

He referred to electric buses that were already being delivered and other electric vehicles that were being tested.

With the fuel cell, it still takes a while: Daimler is aiming for series production of a hydrogen truck in 2027.

In 2030, both types of drive could together account for up to 60 percent of sales, said Daum.

Shareholder representatives consider this to be too slow.

High three-digit number

How many eActros Daimler wants to produce, there is no precise information. "I could imagine that we will sell a high three-digit number of eActros next year," said Rådström simply. So the model will not be a big seller for the time being, Daimler Truck sells 220,000 vehicles a year. Depending on how great the demand is, Daimler wants to be able to react flexibly: The eActros rolls off the assembly line together with the conventional vehicles. The combustion and electric trucks are built similarly. The high-voltage battery will only be installed in the production line, which opened on Thursday. For the final acceptance, the electric trucks go back to the regular process.

The electric version is around three times as expensive as a diesel truck. The ratio of 150,000 to 450,000 euros applies as a guideline. That makes selling difficult. The industry is about costs and much less than the car is about image. For this, electric trucks are exempt from the toll and 80 percent of the additional costs are subsidized by the state; by 2023 the Ministry of Transport has made more than one billion euros available. According to Daimler, the eActros is almost on a par with comparable vehicles in some markets. The range is also important for the transport industry: With the eActros, it is 300 or 400 kilometers with a medium load. The battery, which consists of 105 kWh modules, offers 315 or 420 kWh respectively. The largest batteries in the car have a good 100 kWh, for example in the new BMW iX, a large SUV.

The competition is similar

In this configuration, the Actros is particularly suitable for regional distribution transport, long-distance routes are only possible to a limited extent, especially since there are no charging stations on the motorways.

The plugs of the fast direct current stations, which offer up to 350 kW charging power, fit, but there is almost always no space for a truck, after all, the stations are designed for cars.

In theory, however, a range of 400 kilometers is quite sufficient, because every trucker has to take a break of at least 45 minutes after four and a half hours at the latest.

Mathematically, you can travel about 350 kilometers in this time, if only because of the speed limit of 80 km / h.

With a peak output of 400 kW or 544 hp, the Actros could drive faster, but all trucks are speed-limited.

All other manufacturers, be it MAN, Scania or Volvo, are also working on the topic and are similarly advanced. The start-up from Iveco and Nikola, which has started producing an electric tractor unit, i.e. without a trailer, in Ulm (FAZ September 16), which is more suitable for long-distance transport, recently received a lot of attention. In order to achieve the climate targets that have been set, this is much more important than just taking care of regional transport, says Iveco boss Gerrit Marx. The Nikola Tre has a range of around 550 kilometers and can be recharged in two hours. The first vehicles are expected to hit the German market in 2022. A hydrogen version should be ready for the market in 2023. However, Daimler is also working on an electric tractor, the "eActros Longhaul" should be ready in 2024, the goal is a range of 500 kilometers.However, there is also the problem of the infrastructure here. The necessary hydrogen filling stations are still missing. And a fuel cell truck is roughly four times as expensive as a conventional diesel truck.