The new electric heavy-duty truck from MAN is already seeing high demand a year before the start of production. The international logistics company DB Schenker and the commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus have now signed an agreement to integrate for the first time the new MAN eTruck. The company plans to add 100 new MAN eTrucks to its fleet by 2026. The first vehicles are to be handed over in the first half of 2024.
“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,” 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.
“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.”
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.”
The first MAN eTrucks for DB Schenker will be volume semitrailer tractors, so-called ultra semitrailer tractors. The low semitrailer height of around 950 mm makes it possible to transport electrically volume trailers with an internal height of 3 metres. Ten MAN eTrucks that DB Schenker will receive in 2024 will be ultra-tractor units. The other electric trucks to be delivered in 2025 and 2026 are planned as ultra-tractor units and swap body trucks.
