Daimler, a German truck manufacturer, has developed a new electric truck, called  Mercedes-Benz Urban eTruck, which can carry up to 26 tonnes.

It plans to roll out the truck, which was presented at Stuttgart, by the beginning of the next decade.

The vehicle demonstrates that in the future, heavy trucks will be able to take part in urban distribution operations with zero local emissions and hardly any noise.

The company stated that until quite recently, the use of fully electric drives systems in trucks seemed to be unimaginable primarily because of the high costs of the batteries along with a low range. This is, however, changing as the battery cells are rapidly developing and the technology now has become more mature.

Daimler Trucks expects the costs of batteries to reduce by the factor 2.5 between 1997 and 2025, from 500 Euro/kWh to 200 Euro/kWh, while the performance will improve by the same factor over the same period, from 80 Wh/kg up to 200 Wh/kg.

Mercedes-Benz Trucks head Stefan Buchner said: “With the Mercedes-Benz Urban eTruck, we are underlining our intention to systematically develope the electric drive in trucks to series production maturity.

“This means that we will begin to integrate customers, so as to gain valuable joint experience with respect to the operating ranges and the charging infrastructure in daily transport operations.

“Because we think the entry of this technology into the series production is already conceivable at the beginning of the next decade.”

"We think the entry of this technology into the series production is already conceivable at the beginning of the next decade."

In the light distribution sector, Daimler has been demonstrating the suitability of the fully electric truck in customer trials with the Fuso Canter E-Cell model.

Since 2014, the Fuso-branded six-tonne electric trucks have been successful in the first fleet trials in Portugal.

Under varying operating conditions, the trucks covered more than 50,000km within one year, and reduced CO2 emissions by 37% compared with diesel engines, with operating costs being 64% lower on average.

Image: Daimler presentes Mercedes-Benz Urban eTruck in Stuttgart. Photo: Courtesy of Daimler AG.