Tag: lorries|road transport|sustainability|transport

DB Schenker has signed a cooperation agreement with Trailer Dynamics and the Krone Commercial Vehicle Group on the use of eTrailers in European land transport.

“This agreement marks a further step in the electrification of land transport,” says Cyrille Bonjean Executive Vice President Land Transport for DB Schenker in Europe. “It is essential for us to look for new sustainable solutions that can be integrated into our daily business. With the eTrailer from Trailer Dynamics, we have obtained another promising model for the future.”

Wolfgang Janda, Executive Vice President, Head of Network & Linehaul Management, DB Schenker, adds: “The use of eTrailers enables early entry into the phased transition to a completely CO2-free fleet. In our view, electric trailers do not represent a transitional technology but will instead be a firm component of our commercial vehicle fleet over the long term. This marks yet another step in our efforts to reduce our environmental footprint and become net-zero by 2040.”

Michael Nimtsch, Managing Director at Trailer Dynamics, says: “The vision of Trailer Dynamics is to use eTrailers to make an important contribution to the decarbonisation of the economy and sustainable and environmentally friendly logistics for long-haul trucks. With our cooperation partner DB Schenker, we are taking the next important step toward transforming this vision into reality.”

“Electrification, digitalisation, automation, and decarbonisation are the strategic goals that Krone will achieve with its innovative products – and especially the eTrailer,” adds Dr. Stefan Binnewies, CEO of Krone Holding. “We are therefore very pleased that we not only share these goals with our long-standing customer DB Schenker; we are also jointly making them a reality with this eTrailer project.”

The use of eTrailers makes trucks more sustainable and lowers their CO2 emissions.

The electrified trailers of Trailer Dynamics have an electric drive train that makes it possible to support the drive of the tractor unit. A specially developed component uses a patented sensor system to determine the driving dynamics of the tractor-trailer combination and then readjusts the eTrailer so that the eTrailer supports the tractor unit. The tractor unit cannot be overridden at any time, however. The electric drive train also allows energy to be recovered during braking.

The eTrailer’s drive control system operates independently, so no interface with the tractor is necessary. In addition, the trailers can be combined and used with tractor units from all manufacturers. The eTrailers support diesel, gas, electric, and hydrogen-powered tractors.

The trailers can be equipped with 300kWh, 450kWh, or 600kWh batteries as required. This can extend the range of electric tractors by up to 500km, depending on the use case, and also significantly reduce the fuel consumption of conventional diesel tractors. CO2 emissions can thus be reduced by 20%-40%.

The logistics provider will successively roll out these 2,000 eTrailers across its European network starting in 2024.

First Hydrogen, an automotive and energy developer, has announced that its first zero emission light commercial vehicles (LCVs) have been certified legal on British roads by the Vehicle Certification Authority.

The vehicles will now be able to undertake customer trials on public roads commencing January 2023 for a period of 24 months, during which the company expects to collect significant proprietary data from fleet owners and to capture high-level interest for future orders. The vans will be trialled in real-world conditions with major fleet operators initially in the UK and enable First Hydrogen to publicly showcase its leading design and accelerate the adoption by light commercial vehicle owners of fuel cell-powered vehicles to replace ageing diesel fleets. A total of 13 UK fleet operators in various industries including telecoms, utilities, infrastructure, delivery, grocery and healthcare have signed up to participate in the trials.

These two demonstrator vehicles will showcase the advantages fuel cell electric vehicles have over battery electric vehicles in terms of range and refuelling speed. First Hydrogen vehicles offer 400-600km of range on a single refuelling, which takes a matter of minutes. The certification is a significant milestone for the company and will help with further approvals required as First Hydrogen scales up its vehicle demonstrator programme to trial the vehicles in the European Union, United States and Canada. The global light commercial vehicle market is projected to reach $786.5bn by 2030 and First Hydrogen’s vehicles will help the sector meet zero emission targets.

First Hydrogen is also working in parallel to arrange green hydrogen generation and distribution under its “Hydrogen as a Service” or HaaS program to provide a holistic solution to the market. First Hydrogen’s plans are underway in the UK, Europe, and North America to provide this solution.

Steve Gill, CEO of Automotive for First Hydrogen, says: “This is an important step which validates our engineering and technical expertise. The whole team has worked hard to deliver this certification and we can now move forward with the important customer trials commencing in early 2023.”

Balraj Mann, Chairman and CEO of First Hydrogen Corp., states: “We are proud of our Automotive team and their recent accomplishments. I am excited about the groundwork laid by the whole team and, as we move forward, executing our business plan in the coming months. Green hydrogen is becoming a clean alternative answer to fossil fuels.”