MAN, Daimler Truck and Volvo Trucks: for their trucks, each is aiming for commercial hegemony thanks to the recharging capacity or the extension of the autonomy provided by their batteries. These three manufacturers are also associated in a joint venture to develop a network of 1,700 charging stations for electric trucks in Europe by 2027. But everyone is trying to do well in a very competitive market.
Trucks: continuous kinetic recharging for Daimler
Daimler Truck, which already produced its batteries for its eActros, has just acquired 10% of the capital of the German engineering firm Manz. He thus becomes one of its main shareholders. Daimler Truck will first bring Manz to work with its battery factory Innolab Batteries, in Mannheim (Germany). Objective: to improve its current batteries, and, at the end of 2024, to produce its own lithium-ion battery cells.
Daimler Truck will also push the engineer to develop innovative battery technology for trucks and buses, as well as a system for continuously recharging the batteries from the energy supplied by the vehicle’s drive systems.
540 kWh of batteries at Volvo Trucks
The Volvo Group created its subsidiary Volvo Energy in February 2021. It produces batteries, reconditions them and reuses them. Volvo Trucks has just opened its first truck battery factory in Ghent, Belgium. Using Samsung SDI battery cells and modules, the plant will assemble battery packs from 90 to 540 kWh. These will equip, according to their distance and payload objectives, the electric FH, FM and FX of its new heavy range.
“By integrating the battery assembly process into our production flow, we shorten lead times for our customers and ensure high-performance batteries. We are also increasing economic circularity,” says Roger Alm, President of Volvo Trucks. The group will gain energy autonomy for its vehicles.
1,000 volt charging for MAN
In mid-May, MAN presented the prototype of the electric VI marketed in 2024. He underlined its daily range of 600 to 800 km thanks to its recharging capacity. The manufacturer took advantage of its participation in the HOLA high-power charging project funded by the German government, to collaborate with the equipment manufacturer ABB E-mobility.
By 2025, these two partners will have developed power supply technology over 1,000 V. Its safety and reliability will be based on “a uniform and mandatory standard that could serve as a reference”. MAN and ABB E-mobility are already building eight terminals equipped with megawatt charging systems (MCS) at four sites on the federal highway A2. They will serve as a test for a national extension.
