MAN will take orders for the eTruck at the end of October
According to the Traton brand, sales start in the “first markets” at the end of October. MAN does not specify which countries these will be. However, Germany will certainly be among them. The manufacturer is also not mentioning prices for the electric long-haul truck. DB Schenker and Duvenbeck will be among the first customers.
For the production of the MAN eTruck, the company announced an important milestone parallel to the sales launch date: It has broken ground for the upcoming large-scale production of the batteries. From 2025 onwards, up to 100,000 high-voltage batteries will be built at the Nuremberg site, particularly for the MAN eTruck, but also for electric city buses and, in future, coaches.
Production is already underway on a small scale, but for 2024, it will be relatively small volumes with deliveries to “selected customers.” MAN commissioned the first pre-series electric truck models for its plant logistics. The manual small-scale battery production will be replaced by a 16,000-square-metre facility that will create 350 jobs.
It took about two years from the decision to the groundbreaking ceremony for the new M50 battery building in Nuremberg. MAN is investing around 100 million euros in the plant – for the new building, the necessary logistics, infrastructure, buildings and production facilities.
The fact that large-scale battery production will not start until after the MAN eTruck goes on sale is not a problem, according to MAN. The manufacturer does not expect larger numbers of the electric truck built in Munich until 2025 anyway. That is when the megawatt charging standard MCS is expected to be finalised, for which the MAN eTruck is already prepared.
With fast-charging during the driver’s 45-minute break, daily ranges between 600 and 800 kilometres should be possible, “and in the future even up to 1,000 kilometres,” says MAN. For that, there must be sufficient MCS charging stations so that the driver can arrive with a battery as empty as possible and make full use of the truck’s range. However, the MAN eTruck will also be able to carry out other typical transportation tasks with the CCS charging standard as early as 2024.
To ensure that electric trucks can replace today’s diesel vehicles as quickly as possible, MAN wants to gather the necessary experience and founded its own transport company, LoadFox Transport Solutions GmbH, in December 2022. LoadFox has been using the eTruck between the German sites in Munich, Dachau, Nuremberg, and Salzgitter since the beginning of October, and routes to the Polish plants in Krakow and Starachowice will be added later.
“Through the targeted collection of data and experience in practical use, we can significantly accelerate the development and quality checks of hardware and software for future products and services with LoadFox,” says Florian Hagemann, Managing Director of LoadFox GmbH.
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