AB Volvo, Daimler Trucks, and TRATON Group, a commercial vehicle business unit of the Volkswagen Group, which owns the Scania, MAN, and Navistar brands, recently signed a non-binding cooperation agreement to jointly build a high-performance charging network for electric trucks and buses in Europe.
Under the agreement, the three companies will establish a joint venture in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and start operations in 2022. The three companies will invest 500 million euros in developing the European charging network. By 2027, the network will consist of at least 1,700 charging stations optimized for electric trucks and buses.
In addition, the three companies plan to seek expansion by recruiting additional partners and public funding. By encouraging more partners to join the project, the charging network is expected to grow exponentially and help stakeholders within the framework of the partnership to achieve the EU's green agreement of achieving carbon neutrality in freight transport by 2050.
Analysts say that the above cooperation does not exclude the possibility of opening up to passenger car manufacturers in the future. At the same time, collaboration among competitors will prompt more external rivals to develop a sense of urgency and push them to try to accelerate the construction of charging infrastructure.
Similar collaborations between heavy commercial vehicle manufacturers are not uncommon in the electric vehicle market. In April, Daimler Trucks and Volvo Group joined forces to form Cellcentric, a joint venture for hydrogen fuel cell electric reactors, seeking to advance a technology that has been in development for decades but has been hampered by high costs and poor infrastructure.
The two companies said that they wanted to become leaders in fuel cells and planned to start expanding production in Europe in 2025.
According to previous media sources, Volvo Group acquired a half partnership interest in Daimler Trucks Fuel Cells LLC for about 600 million euros ($4.604 billion) in cash and no debt. The joint venture was renamed Cellcentric GmbH & Co. KG.
The two truck manufacturers hope to test fuel cell-equipped trucks with customers in about three years and begin mass production in 2025-2030. Both parties have equal interests in the joint venture but will continue to compete by using different own vehicle technologies and their respective brands of fuel cell trucks.
Volvo Group believes electric trucks could account for half of its sales in some markets within ten years. The manufacturer began producing electric trucks in the United States late last year and will start building three new electric models for the European market later this year. The Volvo Group first began selling Volvo FL Electric and Volvo FE Electric electric models in Europe about two years ago.
With the launch of the new models, Volvo Trucks will then have six medium and heavy-duty models in its electric truck line-up, which will make it the most extensive portfolio in the industry.
