Daimler Truck Australia president and CEO, Daniel Whitehead has told a briefing of Australian truck journalists to coincide with a media drive in the newly updated Fuso Canter light duty range that the path to fully electric trucks is shaping as an interesting one and one that he doesn’t think can be judged by numbers alone at the moment ,
With global numbers for Daimler electric truck sales revealing recently in the third quarter to the end of September it sold just 666 battery-electric vehicles, up from the even more meagre 491 units it sold in Q3 2023. Those electric vehicle sales numbers were a part of the 114,917 trucks and buses it sold as a group in Q3 2024, compared to 128,861 in the same period last year.
Of the Daimler Group numbers it sold North America Trucks contributed 49,176 units to the overall sales, up from 47,249 in 2023. Mercedes-Benz sold 28,688 units, down from 40,077 the previous year. and its AsiaTrucks division reported sales of 32,245 units, a decrease from 38,052 in 2023.
“I think everybody’s missed the targets on electric trucks that they put in two or three years ago,”Whitehead told the media.
“But I don’t think that’s a reflection of a lack of interest in it, I would say, from where we sit, there’s never been more questions, interest, explanations, demos, however you know, turning interest into invoices probably takes longer than we originally would have thought,” he added
“It’s not that there’s a lack of enthusiasm, I think quite the opposite, but now the people are learning that it’s not just the truck, it’s the infrastructure, it’s the subsidies, it’s the everything that goes with it.
“It’s complex and it’s hard, and it’s the fact that you’re running a business while you’re doing it,” he added.
Whitehead did say that he believed the quality of the inquiry the company is having at the moment in Australia , along with four meetings he had last week with different customers, finance companies, and government agencies, indicated there’s an enormous amount going on.
“It’s still completely inevitable, but the quality of the interest we’re now getting is much more qualified than it was,” Whitehead said.
“It’s not just every transport company wondering what the future holds and saying I want to look at electricity, the people we’re talking to now are the people who actually want to put electric vehicles into their fleet now, or in what we would consider a relatively short horizon.
“I think its fair to say the complexion of the industry won’t change as quickly as everybody imagined,” he added.
Whitehead said that diesel internal combustion engines will be the primary source of power, and will be the primary source of income for his dealers, for some time to come, which he said is also an important factor, because for a salesman or sales woman, needing to earn commission to pay the rent, or pay the mortgage, he says you can be as idealistic and enthusiastic towards electricity as you want to be, but the volume of sales is not there yet to be able to sustain that.
“So you get drawn back in there to interrnal combustion,” said the Daimler Australia boss.
“So we’re probably taking taking more of a responsibility centrally to try and look after that business and those customers, because as a corporation we don’t earn commissions, so for us, we’re not living and dying by those sales,” he added
“Of course we are In a different way because it’s critically important, we’ve still got the metrics to meet and so that’ll transition over time as we get a critical mass out there,” he went on to say.
Whitehead told us that the company has got 20 eActros coming this year, along with another ten in January next year, and 20 additional demo units, which are being built up at the moment, and he says they’re all already booked out to potential customers
Asked what sort of incentives Daimler and Whitehead might request if governments, came to them and asked what a good incentive system would be in order for us to get more zero emission trucks onto the road
“We’re already constantly in discussions with ARENA, the federal government’s renewable energy agency, and let me say, when this started, that agency was fairly distant, and I believe they thought they had it under control. They were waiting for people to come so that they could hand out money to decarbonise things like the transport industry,” said Whitehead.
“I believe that ARENA throught that the money probably wouldn’t go far, and initially they were quite stringent, and companies like Team Global Express and Centurion, to their credit, had to jump through an enormous number of requirements to get grant money from ARENA, as they should,” he said.
Whitehead revealed that originally Daimler had suggested to ARENA that it should perhaps give the likes of his company the subsidy money so that they could make the trucks cheaper.
“ARENA said, no, it doesn’t work that way, It’s taxpayers money and there has to be books and records, which is all good,” he said.
“Now, however they’re a little more open to more ways to use the resources to increase renewable energy into the transport market and to do it more quickly, and now they are saying we’ve got the money, what would you suggest? Are there better ways that we can do this, so we’re talking to the environmental finance companies, who can provide money to subsidise residual values so that we can change the lease price, etc,” White head said.
“I think they’re all learning as we go as well, but I think ARENA, certainly want to spend the money, and probably found that they needed to be a bit more entrepreneurial in terms of making that renewable energy money available, which is good,” he said.
Asked whether. He thought that the ARENA agency might not live if the federal government changes at the next election and whether that might badly affect the sales of zero emission vehicles into the market, Whitehead was quite sanguine, believing that there is an inevitability to the switch longer term.
“Look in that regard, we haven’t really thought about it that hard, quite frankly we’ll take whatever’s available. Look in the bigger scheme of things it’s not an enormous amount of money, but it it’ll grow very quickly, and they’re starting to finance more infrastructure, because they’re now aware that the infrastructure part is lagging and is absolutely vital to the roll out of trucks.
“The trucks have probably been ahead of the infrastructure before this, we can give you a truck if you want one but you have to think about the charging, particularly when you get into the bigger ones, and in that regard, in particular, the infrastructure to support that and make sure it’s charged is probably more complex now than buying a truck,” he said.
“Certainly building the trucks over the last seven years has been a complex task, but now there are trucks available, and the infrastructure around them, and the time it takes to get that infrastructure in place, is a much bigger task.
“It’s like you buy a house and you want to put a pool in or renovate it and you’re told it will be done by Christmas, and two years later you’re still waiting on council approval to change the color of the fence,” Whitehead said with a smile
“I think the infrastructure side, dealing with the power generation companies, the substations, the supply, you know, who’s responsible for what? What do you need to get put in? That’s the hard part. So our thinking is all about packaging that up with the trucks when you’re selling them.
So they’re some of the conversations, and you to do without thinking.
Whitehead told T&B News that Daimler is talking to ARENA and other agencies about funding so the company and its dealers can be subsidised to install a higher density charger into all dealerships, on the proviso that it could potentially make it publicly available to charge other vehicles as well.
“Look I know it probably sounds selfish, because even if those electric vehicle operators are coming in with another brand of truck, we’ve got someone else’s truck in our yard and they’re potentially able to sell one of our trucks to them,” the Daimler boss said.
“I would say, two years ago ARENA would have said no really, and that they were not there yet. Now they’re saying, okay, let’s investigate perhaps a highly efficient jet charger, which two years ago would have been just a tritium charger.
“Whereas now there’s been a lot of changes and they’re talking about looking at support for that size of charger, because It’s now really financially accessible for a dealer to put a high density charger in their yard,” said Whitehead.
“When you look at it, you ask the question, should it be part of the grid, or should it be power generated by solar and running into a bank of batteries that can now be used to run the dealership when it’s not charging trucks because the volume? The speed of the innovation is such now that they’re understanding what the market is all about” Whitehead concluded.
