Taking its quest to become a global leader in
electro-mobility and software solutions for vehicles, Traton SE has announced investments of €2 billion
by the end of 2025 in electric and autonomous vehicles.
Chief Executive Officer Andreas Renschler made the announcement
on Oct. 2, 2019, at the company’s Innovation Day in Södertälje, Sweden.
“Our goal is to become the leading provider of e-trucks and
e-buses,” Renschler said. “By 2025, we plan to have spent a total of more than
€1 billion (approximately USD$1.096 billion) in electro mobility.”
Traton, which is the truck subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, will
also invest €1 billion in software to digitize vehicle operations.
“We want to move into the digital fast lane and are
continuing to evolve from a hardware supplier to a provider of software and
services,” Renschler said.
Renschler said customer interest in electric power is
growing, even if the infrastructure is lagging at this point.
“If all necessary prerequisites are in place at the right
time, I expect for our group, that in the next 10 to 15 years, every third of
our trucks and buses can have an alternative drivetrain, most of them fully
electric,” Renschler said. “One of the prerequisites is that the infrastructure
for alternative fuels and electricity must be fully available to guarantee
seamless operation.”
Renschler noted that the total cost of ownership for battery-powered
vehicles used in distribution services and city buses “will be comparable with
vehicles powered by fossil fuels.”
Traton is leveraging its three brands – MAN, Scania and Volkswagen
Caminhões e Ônibus, to spread development costs out. A common modular electric
powertrain toolkit will be used to produce the first serial all-electric city
buses put into operation by Scania and MAN, Christian Levin, chief operating
officer, explained.
“It can be individually modified depending on the brand and
area of use. As a result, a maximum number of individual solutions can be produced
with a minimum number of components and costs,” he said.
In Brazil, Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus has announced the
formation of an e-consortium at is Resende development and production complex.
The e-consortium will manufacture, set up charging infrastructure, and manage
the lifecycle of battery packs in electric trucks deployed throughout Brazil.
Those trucks will include current 11- and 14-ton electric models
and the new Volkswagen e-Delivery 4-ton model.
“Our team has conceived and built a pioneering technological
configuration and a business model that will enable us to introduce our range
of commercial electric vehicles on the world’s transport market,” Roberto
Cortes, president and CEO of Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus, said.
The e-consortium includes seven suppliers that will share in
the responsibilities of building the vehicles, the company said. Partners include
Siemens, which provides the charging infrastructure and equipment, and supplies
electrical energy to the client; CATL and Moura, which are responsible for
distribution, management and maintenance of the battery packs; Bosch, WEG and
Semcon, which will share responsibility for developing and supplying
components.
That e-consortium will provide primary support for Ambev, a
Brazilian beer and beverage producer that has already placed an order for 1,600
electric trucks.
Traton has invested millions already into its software capabilities.
In 2016, it created the digital brand RIO, which develops digital services for logistics.
There are more than 115,000 trucks connected to its open, cloud-based platform
and the company considers software to be more important in the development of
autonomous vehicles than the vehicles themselves.
Part of that digitalization effort is the continued
development of a common autonomous driving platform. Levin said vehicles have
already been delivered and testing is ongoing.
Scania unveiled a concept vehicle last week, the AXL. The
vehicle has been engaged in testing in the Rio Tinto mine in Australia since
2018. Featuring no driver’s cab, the AXL is monitored by a logistics system
that tells it how it should perform.
“With the Scania AXL concept truck we take a significant
step towards the smart transport systems of the future, where self-driving
vehicles will play a natural part,” Scania’s President and CEO Henrik
Henriksson said. We continue to build and pilot concepts to demonstrate what we
can do with technology that is available today. “
Later this year, Scania expects to put into operation an
electric and autonomous bus to transport passengers in Nobina, which is part of
the Stockholm metropolitan area.
MAN is also engaged in autonomous projects. It will
introduce self-driving trucks in the port of Hamburg in a few months. The
trucks will be driven by drivers on the highway, in some sections in highly automated
mode. Once at the port, the driver will exit the vehicle and the truck will
continue to drive autonomously to the Altenwerder container terminal, where it
will be autonomously unloaded before driving back to the driver on its own.
Not all the innovation will fall to electric. Traton said
that “highly efficient diesel drive systems, alternative drives and fuels like
biofuels, ethanol or the gas technologies LNG and CNG as well as hybrid and
plug-in hybrid solutions are playing a major role in efforts to reduce CO2
emissions.”
Renschler concluded his remarks by urging leaders in each
country to create an “incentive program for electric commercial vehicles and a
European master plan for charging infrastructures.”
