Daimler Trucks: Market leader for hybrid commercial vehicles

Through its Japanese and North American subsidiaries, Daimler Trucks is currently the leader in the still relatively new market for hybrid commercial vehicles. Böhm’s team at Mitsubishi Fuso serves as the center for hybrid drive development at Daimler Trucks. About 20 engineers are concentrating on the development of hybrid drive; and a further 100 colleagues are involved with commercial vehicle hybrids in one way or another. “Mitsubishi Fuso’s many years of experience with hybrid drives led to the decision to set up the hybrid development center in Japan, which is also home to many local component suppliers,” Böhm explains. Fuso engineers are particularly knowledgeable about the electronic systems that control the interaction between hybrid components. Their hybrid bus, for example, needs to “feel” as much as possible like a conventional bus – or even better. Among other things, that’s because bus drivers’ opinions carry a lot of weight at operating companies in Japan, as we found out at Haneda Airport.

Series hybrid drives offer Daimler Trucks good prospects for the future, since “it’s no problem to replace diesel generators with fuel cells to supply the electricity,” Böhm explains. Daimler Trucks has already tested 36 Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses with fuel cells that run on hydrogen over the last few years. The vehicles were put through tough day-to-day operations in ten cities, and they proved to be just as reliable in Beijing and Reykjavik winters as they were in the hot summers of Madrid and Perth. In addition, the hydrogen infrastructure was tested to ascertain the most economical method of generating hydrogen for the future.

Daimler engineers are using their hybrid buses to further optimize all electric drive system components, as well as ancillary devices. At the moment, Mercedes-Benz is testing the large three-axle articulated Citaro G BlueTec Hybrid bus, whose powerful lithium-ion battery and four high-performance hub motors (combined output: 320 kW/435 hp) enable it to operate in purely electric mode for half of the time on typical inner-city routes. Such operation reduces both noise and pollutant emissions.

Parallel hybrid commercial vehicles from Daimler are already in operation. In Japan, Mitsubishi Fuso has produced the Canter Eco Hybrid since July 2006. More recently, Daimler began a European hybrid evaluation and delivered the first vehicles to the world’s leading logistics company, Deutsche Post World Net. The company is now conducting large-scale fleet tests with the Mercedes-Benz Atego BlueTec Hybrid delivery truck of 7.5 and 12 tons GVW, as well as the Mitsubishi Fuso Canter Eco Hybrid. The former are being used to deliver mail in Germany; the latter are being operated by DHL Express in the UK. The vehicles are expected to reduce fuel consumption by as much as 20 percent.