ACU Dec-18 Final LR

TRUCKING
Incentives to roll in 2019
Andreas Scheur, Germany's Federal
Minister for Transport and Digital
Infrastructure, ordered electric trucks
to be exempt from truck tolls from
January 1, 2019 as part of the
government's long-term plan to
encourage the use of alternative
energy-powered vehicles.
“Electric trucks will be exempt from
truck tolls from 1 January 2019. This is
a great incentive for transport
companies to switch to green
vehicles,” the minister was quoted as
saying about the plan in Süddeutsche
Zeitung, one of Germany's largest
daily newspapers.
Growing urban emissions is one of
the many problems facing cities and
heavy trucks have been identified as
among heavy polluters with a single
truck consuming about 40 times the
fuel consumption of a personal
vehicle.
Germany is expanding its existing
toll on trucks from nearly 15,000 km of
federal highways to 40,000, leaving
only the electric trucks exempt from
paying toll fees as additional incentive
to those switching to environmentfriendly
vehicles.
Further, the German government is
continuing its "Concept ELV²" project
which is essentially the development
and testing of heavy-duty electric
trucks for distribution operations with
subsidy from the Federal Environment
Ministry (BMU) and the Federal
Ministry of Economy and Energy
(BMWi).
Gas-fueled trucks are also exempt
from paying road toll charges from
2019 apart from a subsidy of up to
EUR 12,000 for LNG trucks and up to
EUR 8,000 for CNG trucks.
The Benz eActros
With the German freight logistics
the largest in Europe with an
estimated turnover of over EUR 170
billion annually, the country leads in
innovation when it comes to modes of
transport, interlinked roads, rails,
water and air routes. Last October,
Mercedes-Benz Trucks has delivered
yet another all-electric eActros to a
customer for on-road testing.
Meyer-Logistik, a company based
in Friedrichsdorf in Hessen, will be
test-driving a 25-ton truck with a
refrigeration unit for transporting
temperature-sensitive foodstuffs
from the warehouse to different
supermarkets in the centre of
Hamburg.
The weight of the transported
goods can be up to 10 tons. The whole
day's tour is approximately 100 km
long and is dealt with by one driver in
one shift at first. There is no need to
recharge during the trip because the
range of the eActros is up to 200 km.
Daimler said Meyer-Logistik is one
of 20 customers from different
industries that have integrated the
heavy-duty electric truck into their
fl e e t . E a c h of t h e s e s e l e c ted
customers will put a near-series
version of either the 18 or 25-ton
variant through its paces in real
operations and will test the respective
vehicle for its suitability for their daily
field of work.
T h e a i m i s to m a ke l o c a l l y
emission-free and quiet driving a