‘Too risky’ to not use battery and hydrogen tech: Daimler Truck CEO

The Daimler Truck CEO has spoken of the difficulties and options his industry faces in the several years forward, as competition heats up and efforts to establish zero-emission choices deal with hurdles relating to value.

In an job interview with CNBC’s “Avenue Symptoms Europe” Friday, Martin Daum spoke about the recent problem when it came to the price tag of electrified trucks, emphasizing that a quantity of things ended up in enjoy.

“The very first truth of the matter is, in major duty business automobiles you have to have these kinds of a substantial sum of power, indicating you require such large batteries, that this sort of a truck constantly will value noticeably additional than a combustion motor powered truck,” he stated.

“The price savings appear if the selling price for inexperienced, renewable electrical power drops and the charge for emitting CO2 rises and then out of that equation you may well get a price parity, or in other … conditions road transportation will grow to be much more pricey.”

Regardless of the earlier mentioned, Daum said the company had to go “straight forward to zero-emission transportation.” It really is formerly laid out strategies for zero-emission motor vehicles to account for “up to 60% of income” by the calendar year 2030.

The electrification of lengthy-haul, significant-obligation vans poses its individual established of unique troubles. The Intercontinental Power Agency’s Global EV Outlook for 2021 has described extended-haul trucking as needing “state-of-the-art technologies for large ability charging and/or huge batteries.”

Daimler Truck’s aim on zero-emission technologies will set it in competition with corporations like Tesla and Geely, which are also creating electrical vehicles. Daum was bullish about the foreseeable future, having said that, telling CNBC Daimler Truck was “the pioneer in electrical trucks.”

“We deliver, we don’t announce … we just launched our all-electric hefty responsibility truck in Europe, the eActros, a few of months back,” he stated. “But that was a start, not an announcement.”

“So how does our technologies stack up to the other folks? We initial want to see the vehicles of the many others to then examine the technologies.”

Along with battery electrical cars, Daimler Truck is also concentrating on what it describes as “hydrogen-primarily based fuel mobile electric powered cars.” To this stop, it is focusing on a network of 150 refueling stations and 5,000 “heavy-obligation hydrogen vans” by the 12 months 2030.

In his job interview with CNBC, Daum was requested about the discussion between battery electrical and hydrogen fuel cell. “We go for equally due to the fact each … make perception,” he replied, heading on to reveal how different systems would be proper in different scenarios.

“In normal, you can say: If you go to metropolis shipping and delivery where by you need lessen quantities of energy in there, you can demand overnight in a depot, then it can be undoubtedly battery electric powered,” he stated.

“But the instant you are on the street, the minute you go from Stockholm to Barcelona … in my view, you need to have something which you can transportation greater and the place you can refuel much better and that is in the end H2.”

“The ruling is not out, but I think it’s far too dangerous for a enterprise our dimension to go with just a single technological know-how.”

Daum’s feedback arrive as Daimler Truck prepares for a planned listing on the Frankfurt Stock Trade in December.