In the future, 13 battery-electric trucks will transport thousands of parcels and letters between the depots of the delivery service giant DHL in the greater Berlin area. The electric vehicles are another building block for the group in converting its own fleet to more sustainable drive types.
“Freight transport with trucks is currently one of the main causes of CO2 emissions in traffic,” said Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing in Schönefeld at the presentation of the vans. Nevertheless, trucks remained one of the main modes of transport for logistics. “It is all the more important that we make our truck traffic in Germany climate-neutral,” emphasized the FDP politician.
Minister of Transport: Truck traffic must become climate-neutral
When it comes to last-mile delivery, parcel service providers are making good progress here. According to DHL, around 50 percent of its own parcel deliveries in Germany are electric. The company has thousands of e-vans and cargo bikes in use.
The situation is different on longer routes between cities or mail and parcel centers, where larger and heavier vans are needed. The share of alternative drives in vehicles used in the courier-express-parcel industry was only 16 percent in 2022, as reported by the Federal Association of Parcel and Express Logistics (Biek). “The share will continue to increase in the future, especially if the manufacturers can offer the vehicles at lower prices.”
From the point of view of the industry, the obstacles are manifold. On the one hand, the acquisition costs for more sustainable alternatives are still “many times higher” compared to conventional diesel vans, according to the Biek. In addition, there is a lack of the necessary infrastructure, especially on long-haul routes. Only in the case of biofuels, with which existing vehicles can be refueled instead of diesel, is the refueling infrastructure already in place. However, the price for liquid biofuels is between 15 cents and 40 cents higher than the selling price for diesel. This makes the transition difficult.
There are still few alternative drives in use for long-distance journeys
From the point of view of the parcel delivery service DPD, biofuels can only be an interim solution anyway. “In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, they are not progress,” said DPD manager Gerd Seber. Manufacturers therefore rely on hydrogen for long distances and heavy trucks. However, both the availability of the vehicles and the expansion of a hydrogen tank infrastructure are still inadequate.
Nevertheless, the industry is open to testing and using innovative concepts “that promote climate-friendly and efficient parcel logistics,” according to the industry association. City logistics expert Kai-Oliver Schocke confirms this. “All deliverers are already using electricity for the last mile – in some cities even 100 percent,” said the President of the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. “The problem of switching to resource-saving vehicles was less due to the will of the companies than to the fact that, purely technically, no vehicles were available for a long time.”
This fact is gradually changing. The 13 new DHL electric trucks in Berlin are an example of this. Competitor Hermes also points to such attempts. “Hermes Germany currently has two electric trucks in daily service – one in the Hamburg area, one in the Berlin area,” the company said.
Overhead lines for e-trucks are being tested
In addition to new drives, work is also being done elsewhere to make truck traffic emission-free: In some regions, overhead lines have been installed over the motorways as part of pilot projects, with which trucks can be driven fully electrically. There are such tests in Hesse, for example, which are scientifically supervised by the Technical University of Darmstadt. “However, in the medium term, not the entire German road network will be equipped with overhead lines for trucks,” said Schocke.
The logistics expert also sees potential in shifting parcel transport to rail. DHL, among others, but also the competitors DPD and Hermes use and are already using this option in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn.
But from the point of view of some companies, the large number of model tests is also an obstacle. “Overall, a certain amount of predictability and future security would be nice,” said DPD sustainability chief Seber. “You should concentrate on one or two technologies in some form and then create the political conditions for it.” Only then could producers and suppliers adjust to it.
