Daimler Truck maps what it takes to scale electric trucks

Customers hold back for two reasons, Rådström said: infrastructure and cost parity with diesel.

Chargers, hydrogen stations and tolls

Europe has fewer than 2,000 public truck charge points today, most of them standard CCS chargers, Rådström said. By 2030, she said, it needs 35,000 megawatt charging points to support the battery-electric trucks the CO2 targets require.

Europe has around 187 hydrogen stations, most supplying only 350 bar, which Rådström said is not suitable for trucks. She said Europe needs 1,000 by 2030.

On cost, Rådström pointed to CO2-based road tolls. In Germany, the toll difference between a diesel truck and an electric truck comes out to about 33 to 35 cents per kilometer, which she said helps offset the higher investment cost. Only 13 of the EU’s 27 member states have adopted CO2-based tolls, she said, and fewer than a handful of those set a meaningful gap between electric and diesel.

What Dachser sees in its network

Stefan Hohm, chief development officer at Dachser, the German logistics provider, said on stage that the company has 25 emission-free delivery areas in Europe and more than 200 battery-electric trucks on the road, including more than 160 Mercedes-Benz Actros models.

“We are proud to have more than 200 battery-electric trucks on the road, but the truth is we run more than 15,000,” Hohm said. “So this is only a beginning. And financing the first generation of battery-electric vehicles remains the main hurdle for our transport partners.”

Hohm called grid access and capacity the main pain point. A Dachser network study found almost all of its 300 European branches have access to 1 to 3 megawatts of grid capacity, he said, and in Germany the company deals with 800 energy providers. He wants clear timelines and binding commitments from them.

Toll gaps between diesel and electric trucks vary by country: almost 33 cents per kilometer in Germany, nothing in France and almost €1 in Switzerland, Hohm said. He wants a stable framework that holds for at least five to six years.

Dachser has built more than 800 charging stations on its own yards, and Hohm said depot charging works best. He said Dachser still needs public and semi-public charging along European corridors, at stable prices.

“If you have your own tariff in the depot, it sometimes really messes up the business case if you have to pay more than double when you are charging publicly,” he said.

Lowliner and NextGenH2 timelines

The eActros Lowliner, a battery-electric tractor with a low fifth-wheel height for high-volume mega trailers, opened for orders Sept. 15, with series production at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Wörth, Germany, set for the second quarter of 2027. The three-battery version offers around 500 kilometers of range at full load, and megawatt charging arriving in the second half of 2027 will take it from 10% to 80% in under 30 minutes, the company said.

On hydrogen, a small series of 100 Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 fuel-cell trucks enters customer operations from the end of 2026, with Dachser as the first customer. Hohm said the first truck will run two shifts out of Malsch, near Karlsruhe, with a target of 220,000 kilometers a year.

The regulatory review

Daimler Truck is asking the EU for an early review of its heavy-duty CO2 regulation, with the 2030 target tied to infrastructure rollout and customers’ total cost of ownership. That target calls for a 43% cut in CO2 emissions from new heavy-duty vehicles compared with 2019, and the Council of the EU adopted a temporary flexibility on March 30 that lets manufacturers accumulate credits from 2025 through 2029 by beating their own annual targets. The same release said the core rules are due for revision in 2027.

The company puts the cost of falling short at about €120 million in penalties for each percentage point Mercedes-Benz Trucks misses. Rådström said a 10-point miss “effectively would wipe out the full profitability globally of Mercedes-Benz Trucks for that year.”

An eActros 600 world tour

Tobias Wagner, a professional driver and content creator known as the “Elektrotrucker,” is taking an eActros 600 about 45,000 kilometers through around 30 countries over as long as a year, with no more than 80 charging stops.

“Success for me would be that the conversation shifts — that we’re not talking about if those trucks work, because they do, I show it every day — but more to: okay, it’s working, but what do we need to do as a next step in order to build the ecosystem around those electric trucks?” Wagner said.