Two eCascadias in Customer Hands

August 28, 2019 Volume 1, Number 8

The first two Freightliner eCascadia trucks are now officially with customers —  Penske Truck Leasing and family-owned NFI – as Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) leads the way with class 8 electrification in the real world. The trucks, part of Freightliner’s Electric Innovation Fleet, were formally handed over during a press event in California last week. Both customers will use their vehicles to test the integration of battery electric trucks into large-scale fleet operations. They will get a total of 30 trucks to test between them, 10 eCascadias each while Penske will also run 10 eM2 medium-duty machines.

“Co-creation is the cornerstone of DTNA’s strategy to rapidly develop and deploy battery electric trucks. DTNA’s partnerships with customers like Penske and NFI provide valuable feedback for the final design of our trucks, as well as the design of the surrounding e-mobility ecosystem,” said Roger Nielsen, president and CEO of DTNA

The Freightliner Innovation Fleet is supported by a partnership between DTNA and California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District which focuses on improving air quality in the South Coast Basin and partially funded the Innovation Fleet with a grant of about US$16M. Freightliner eCascadias and medium-duty electric Freightliner eM2s from the Innovation Fleet will be operated within the South Coast AQMD jurisdiction.

PENSKE AND NFI are the first to deploy battery-electric commercial vehicles from Freightliner in their operations. Penske will run eCascadias in daily delivery operations within California’s ‘Inland Empire’ while NFI will employ its trucks in drayage operations at the ports of both Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Penske operates more than 323,000 vehicles and serves customers from more than 1100 locations in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

NFI is an integrated North American supply-chain provider headquartered in Camden, N.J. Privately held by the Brown family since its inception in 1932, it employs more than 11,300 people. Its dedicated and drayage fleet consists of over 4000 tractors and 9700 trailers.

THE FREIGHTLINER eCASCADIA is built on the foundation of the New Cascadia, designed for local and regional distribution and drayage. It was first revealed in June 2018 along with the medium-duty eM2. The planned start of series production for both models is late 2021. In preparation for their introduction, Freightliner has established multiple avenues for co-creating with customers. The company’s Electric Vehicle Council, a collective of 38 customers, works to address the total e-mobility ecosystem. Freightliner’s Innovation Fleet provides customers with the opportunity to fully test the eM2 and the eCascadia in real-world use. I

The eCascadia and eM2 are part of Daimler Trucks’ global electrified truck initiative, joining the company’s Thomas Built Buses’ all-electric Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouley school bus, the Fuso eCanter, and the Mercedes-Benz eActros and eCitaro. To date, there are more than 100 electrified trucks and buses from Daimler Trucks & Buses on the road globally.

Not surprisingly, the eCascadia tractor uses much componentry from Daimler’s eActros truck in Germany. Its battery is bigger – at 550 kWh — since it targets an 80,000-lb gross weight for its distribution work whereas the eActros, a 4×2 straight truck, only needs a 56,000-lb gross. The tractor’s tandem rear axle – with four motors – is from the German eCitaro electric bus. Modifications for truck use included different gearing to bring speed from a maximum of 46 to 65 mph. With a 150kW charger, the eCascadia needs about three hours to charge to 80% of battery capacity.

The first two eCascadias now in customer hands were essentially hand-built by a team led by Dr. Andreas Juretzka, Senior Group Lead, Electric Mobility Group. He’s a very passionate engineer who clearly loves his work. Tasked by Roger Nielsen to create an electric version of the New Cascadia just 18 months ago, he assembled a team of 10 people that he calls a “swarm”. They had carte blanche, worked like demons, Juretzka says, and delivered the eM2 as well. That team now includes some 100 people.

MARTIN DAUM EXPLAINS THE eLOGIC. During the handoff of the first eActros to a customer in Germany last February, Daimler’s commercial vehicles chief Martin Daum explained what the development of electric trucks means to his company and others. He referred to coming truck efficiency requirements in Europe. Similar logic applies here.

“Fuel efficiency and low fuel consumption are the main purchase criteria for our customers and we are right at the top in Europe with our vehicles in terms of fuel consumption,” said Daum. “We have continuously improved these vehicles over the past 10, 20 years; we have continually explored the limits that are technically possible. This means that with regard to which pressures, which temperatures we work with, how algorithms, computer simulation programs, predictive driving, automated driving, aerodynamics and so on can help – we have made considerable progress, invested many hundreds of millions and as a result achieved reductions of just between 1 and 1.5% a year.

“If we now get a regulation requiring us to achieve reductions of 2% and after 2025 of more than 3% a year, then we have no technical solution – and not just we at Daimler, but the industry as a whole,” he continued. “But since industry in general is dependent on trucks, a solution must be found.

“One solution would be like the eActros,” Daum said. “This means that if we miss our targets by 5%, then 5% of our vehicles must emit no CO₂ at all. Since these electric vehicles are significantly more expensive than diesel vehicles, we now have to find a way of pricing this in the market, in which segments we will use them, in which form legislation can significantly help with something like this.”

CUMMINS DEALS WITH OLD BATTERIES

Cummins has just announced a multi-year partnership with the University of California San Diego and its battery validation lab to analyze viable business and technical approaches to re-use and re-purpose electric vehicle batteries effectively. It’s a question that’s been asked often in recent years, without an obvious and comprehensive answer.

Under the agreement, UC San Diego will perform accelerated testing and real-world application testing, and will develop an outdoor second-life demonstration system comprised of Cummins battery modules. The collaboration will enable Cummins to acquire valuable data on the aging behaviors of its battery modules, test integration solutions for second-life battery systems, and validate stationary energy-storage system performance under grid energy storage applications.