Risk IFW June16

All new cars acquired by the city of Stuttgart will be electric from now on, says Fritz Kuhn, the German city’s Lord Mayor. “Sustainable mobility is a key issue for cities, electric mobility is an important element of it and we’re showing the way,” he states.

Such cars can only be viewed as truly emission-free however if their batteries are re-charged using renewable energy, he stresses. “So we are ensuring that the energy provided by our re-charging stations comes from renewable sources,” he states.

Stuttgart EV trial

Electric light trucks have a key role to play in the fleet mix too says Kuhn, and the city is taking four all-electric zero-exhaust-emission Fuso Canter E-Cell 6.0-tonners on trial for 12 months. Like Mercedes-Benz, Fuso is part of the Daimler family.

Two of the trucks are bodied as tippers and will be used by road repair crews and landscape gardeners. The other two are fitted with box bodies and will be used to transport everything from refuse bins to furniture.

A fifth E-Cell will be operated in Stuttgart on trial with parcels carrier Hermes. It will be deployed on a shuttle service transporting 600 to 700 parcels and packages at a time from a distribution hub on the outskirts into the city centre.

Both trials are being carried out in conjunction with Fuso in a bid to reduce NOx (oxides of nitrogen) and particulate matter (PM) levels in the atmosphere.

“The Canter E-Cell project is part of our long-term climate protection programme under which we intend to systematically halve the CO2 emissions of our fleet by 2020,” says Dirk Rahn, managing director, operations at Hermes Logistics Group Germany. In the recent past Hermes has tested the electric Mercedes Vito E-Cell on delivery routes in Berlin and Hamburg.

Sitting in a bowl surrounded by hills, Stuttgart can at time suffer from poor air quality. As early as April of this year warnings were being issued about excessive dust in the atmosphere and drivers were being encouraged to leave their cars at home and use public transport instead.

The Stuttgart trials succeed a similar exercise carried out by Fuso last year with fleets in Portugal, where Canter is assembled. This time around however the compact electric truck will be operating in a hilly city further to the north and subject to chillier winter temperatures.

Cost savings

Fuso is confident it will cope and adds that the Portuguese trial has already revealed that E-Cell’s operating costs can be up to 64% lower than those of a diesel truck of equal weight.

“It achieved savings of around €1,000 per 10,000 kms,” says Mark Llistosella, president and chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation. The next-generation E-Cell that Fuso is already working on promises to be even more cost-effective, he adds.

Fuso admits that the front-end price of E-Cell is likely to be higher than that of a diesel 6.0-tonner when it goes into volume production, probably in two years’ time. By then the price gap between the diesel and electric models may have narrowed, however, because the price of lithium-ion batteries is likely to have fallen further.

“They’ve come down by 25% over the past 12 months alone,” says Llistosella. The next five years could see a further fall of between 20% and 25%, he suggests.

E-Cell’s maximum range between recharges is upwards of 100kms, says Fuso, although this is likely to fall to closer to 70kms in the winter months it admits, as operating conditions become more arduous and the electric in-cab heater is switched on. The lithium-ion batteries can be fully recharged overnight in around six to eight hours but fleets with access to a fast-charge facility should be able to return them to 80% of their capacity within half-an-hour to an hour during the working day.

Battery weight limits payload

E-Cell’s four lithium-ion traction battery packs weigh 600kg in total. Mounted either side of the chassis and delivering 48kWh between them, they power a 110kW (150hp) electric motor which uses a single-speed transmission to drive the rear wheels. Maximum torque is 650Nm with a continuous 400Nm.

No decision has as yet been taken as to whether the batteries will be sold with the vehicle or leased separately. Nor has Fuso announced what the warranty on the batteries will be other than to state that the batteries installed in the diesel-electric Canter Eco Hybrid that is already in production are warranted for 10 years.

The E-Cell chassis cab tips the scales at 2,990kg. Fit a box body and the weight would increase to 3,530kg leaving a gross payload capacity of 2,470kg.

E-Cell accelerates smoothly and runs quietly which gives it a key advantage if deliveries have to be made late at night when householders in the vicinity will be asleep. The lack of noise from a diesel engine has not resulted in other potential sources of noise on the vehicle – the suspension for example – becoming more apparent.

Alert for pedestrians

Being whisper-quiet means however that the truck may be almost on top of pedestrians and cyclists before they are aware of its presence. That is why it is equipped with VSP – Vehicle Sound for Pedestrians.

Press a button at below 15kmh and it generates a buzzing noise that they should be able to hear. However it is not loud enough to cause a disturbance if the driver is dropping off goods at midnight at an industrial unit surrounded by dwellings inhabited by people expecting an undisturbed sleep.

Says Dr Wolfgang Bernhard, Daimler management board member responsible for trucks and buses; “Today’s internal combustion engine is highly-efficient, eco-friendly and above all, clean, and will long remain without a viable alternative so far as long-distance transport is concerned. With urban short-radius distribution the situation is different, and here a switch to electric trucks will be a technical and economic possibility within a few years’ time.”

With some major cities increasingly eager to ban diesel engines from their centres on environmental grounds, E-Cell – which as things stand has precious few competitors – might just point the way.