Drives quieter and lighter than diesel trucks: Stefan Schupp, fleet manager and driver trainer at Logistik Schmitt, drives an electric truck.
Image: Lucas Bäuml
Trucks with electric drives are not suitable for tough everyday use? A medium-sized forwarding company from Mannheim does it – and buys more e-trucks.
There’s one thing Stefan Schupp doesn’t like about his truck: it’s just too quiet. The others, especially pedestrians and cyclists, often don’t hear him properly when he’s driving through the city center with his 40-tonne truck-trailer combination. This can sometimes lead to dangerous situations. The driving experience up in the driver’s cab is quite amazing: no vibrations and no rattling from a diesel engine, instead you glide almost silently across the road, like on a giant magic carpet. Because this truck drives with an electric drive. He has no fuel tank on board, but a battery.
Marcus Theurer
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
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“Compared to the diesel, you roll much more without a drive than with the diesel, you can take your foot off the gas much earlier at traffic lights,” says Schupp. His truck does not have an internal combustion engine, the many mechanical parts of which cause friction losses when the vehicle coasts down. Under the driver’s cab, where the diesel engine is usually located, there are only a few electrical ancillary units.