The FINANCIAL — Mercedes-Benz Trucks has delivered yet another all-electric eActros to a customer for on-road testing. The recipient this time around is Meyer-Logistik.
For one year, the company based in Friedrichsdorf in Hessen will now be test-driving a 25-tonne truck with a refrigeration unit for transporting temperature-sensitive foodstuffs from the warehouse to different supermarkets in the centre of Hamburg. The weight of the transported goods can be up to 10 tonnes. The whole day’s tour is approx. 100 kilometres long and is dealt with by one driver in one shift at first. There is no need to recharge during the trip because the range of the eActros is up to 200 km. The vehicle hand-over to Meyer-Logistik was on Thursday on the warehouse premises of a major German supermarket chain in Stelle near Hamburg.
Meyer-Logistik is one of twenty customers from different industries that have integrated the heavy-duty electric truck into their fleet. Each of these selected customers will put a near-series version of either the 18 or 25-tonne variant through its paces in real operations and will test the respective vehicle for its suitability for their daily field of work. The aim is to make locally emission-free and quiet driving a reality in cities by 2021, also with series heavy-duty trucks – and all of this as economically viable as with a diesel truck. The test series consists of two phases, each with ten customers and spanning a total of around two years.
The first eActros of the so-called “innovation fleet” has been in action since September with a customer, and the second one was handed over at the beginning of October. The rest of the first phase of vehicle hand-overs will be completed by the end of the year. All test customers transport goods in urban areas and use the eActros for tasks which would otherwise be carried out by conventional diesel vehicles – in a wide range of different sectors and categories. The palette ranges from food to building and industrial materials. The body variants range from refrigerated and box bodies to bulk goods and tarpaulin bodies.
