Daimler Truck AG announced that it has signed an agreement with TotalEnergies for joint commitment to the de-carbonisation of road freight in the European Union.
Accordingly, the partners will collaborate to develop ecosystems for heavy-duty trucks running on hydrogen, with the intent to demonstrate the attractiveness and effectiveness of trucking powered by clean hydrogen and the ambition to play a lead role in kickstarting the rollout of hydrogen infrastructure for transportation.
Both companies are looking to jointly investigate the means of reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of hydrogen truck operations, in line with their common approach to work together with authorities on the regulatory framework in the European Union. Daimler Truck and TotalEnergies are both members of the H2Accelerate consortium.
In particular, TotalEnergies has the ambition by 2030 to operate directly or indirectly up to 150 hydrogen refuelling stations in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France. As part of the collaboration, Daimler Truck is also to supply hydrogen-powered fuel-cell trucks to its customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and France by 2025. Furthermore, the truck manufacturer will support its customers to ensure easy operability and highly competitive uptime.
Karin Rådström, CEO, Mercedes-Benz Trucks and Member of the Board of Management at Daimler Truck, said, “Regarding the long-haul freight segment, we are convinced that CO2-neutral transportation will be enabled in the future by hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks as well as purely battery-powered trucks. In order to make this possible, we want to establish a pan-European hydrogen ecosystem together with strong partners such as TotalEnergies. I am fully convinced that this collaboration will play a key role in our intensified activities on the road toward hydrogen-powered trucking.”
Alexis Vovk, President - Marketing & Services and member of the TotalEnergies Executive Committee, said, “Hydrogen will have its role in TotalEnergies’ journey to decarbonise mobility, especially in European long-haul transportation. We want to build a multi-energies company with the ambition to get to Net Zero by 2050, together with society. Therefore, the creation of a European network of H2 truck stations for mobility is one of the key challenges we intend to tackle. We are proud to partner with a motivated player like Daimler Truck to develop CO2-neutral truck mobility through a harmonised approach.”