International logistics company DB Schenker is taking steps to electrify its fleet and road freight transport by adding 100 new MAN eTrucks to its fleet by 2026. The first vehicles will be produced in small series on the production line at the company’s headquarters in Munich and handed over in the first half of 2024.
As the first pilot customer for these eTrucks, DB Schenker aims to gain practical experience with the product as early as possible and will set up its own charging infrastructure, intelligent route planning, and other digital services from MAN Digital Solutions such as eManager, ServiceCare and MAN Driver App.
The company will also receive 360° consulting from MAN Transport Solutions, including route analysis, charging strategy, charging infrastructure planning, and energy demand optimization. The first MAN eTrucks for DB Schenker will be volume semitrailer tractors, and the production has been prepared at MAN since 2021 in the MAN eMobility Center, with conventional diesel trucks and electric trucks running off one assembly line during the ramp-up of electromobility.
MAN will produce the high-voltage batteries in Nuremberg, investing around 100 million euros over the next five years, and will receive support from the Bavarian state government, which has pledged a contribution of around 30 million euros to energy research and technology funding for the period 2023 to 2027.
“DB Schenker and MAN are pacing the path to an electric future together. We are very pleased to have our first customer for the new eTruck. The demand in the market for this fully electric vehicle is already enormous. The topic is now really picking up speed, also because more and more of our customers are setting themselves extremely ambitious decarbonisation targets. This has a direct impact on the logistics chains. However, we will only be able to achieve a sustainable mobility turnaround in heavy goods transport with the appropriate political support. This concerns, among other things, the rapid development of the charging infrastructure and also the further design of the funding framework for the acquisition of electric trucks,” said Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, at the New Year’s reception at MAN’s Munich site, which was also attended by the Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs, Hubert Aiwanger.
Cyrille Bonjean, Head of Land Transport at DB Schenker Europe, said: “We want to build up practical experience with e-trucks as early as possible. In this way, we can quickly create an offer for the economy to make supply chains more climate-friendly. That’s why it was important for us to get the first MAN eTrucks. This brings us another step closer to our goal of being net zero on the road in land transport by 2040.”
