NextETRUCK: Decarbonising medium duty vehicle fleets
Context
The transport sector is the only sector in the EU with increased Green House Gas (GHG) emissions compared to 1990. As the commercial freight sector is expected to see an increase in transport volume toward 2050, while the EU set a net-zero target in Green Deal, zero emission transport adaption needs to be accelerated.
Medium Duty Vehicles (7.5t – 16t GVW) contribute around 25% of CO2 emissions from all vehicles >7.5t GVW worldwide. This vehicle segment is expected to grow as logistic flows in and out of urban areas increase due to increasing demand from retail, business and households. These urban areas are also the first to establish zero emission zones, increasing the demand for zero emission medium duty vehicles.
Project brief
To address this challenge, the Horizon Europe funded NextETRUCK project aims to develop the next generation of battery electric Medium Duty Vehicle holistic, innovative, affordable, competitive, and synergetic as explained in the figure below. Offering a minimum energy efficiency increase of 10% compared to existing high-end electric vehicles and a wide range of use cases and business models.
The project consists of a consortium of 19 partners from 8 countries, runs from July 2022 till 31 December 2025, and includes three real-case demonstrations in Utrecht, Istanbul and Barcelona.
Objectives
The overarching objective of the NextETRUCK project is to play a pioneering role in the decarbonization of the medium duty vehicle fleets, aiming for a significant leap of knowledge at component, vehicle, fleet, infrastructure and ecosystem levels. There are six concrete objectives:
- ZEV concepts tailored for regional medium freight haulage (N2 & N3) with at least 10% energy efficiency increase compared to existing highest-end benchmark EVs of the same size category and operating for similar mission profiles.
- Advanced vehicle Digital Twin, as well as digital tools for fleet management and virtual integration of ZEV
- Vehicle architecture design tool for optimized design, safety, sizing and integration of powertrain components, leading to TCO reduction
- Efficient fast charging concept and infrastructure demonstrator that is cost-efficient, flexible and compliant with various business practices and fleet operation structures.
- Demonstrators in three different unique real-world cases where the concepts’ feasibility and superiority to the existing systems are validated for a range of at least 200 km daily operation over a period of at least 6 months.
- New business models to increase the end user acceptance and foster market uptake of the NextETRUCK solutions.
Cenex NL key contributions
Our contribution to the NextETRUCK project will be by leading the TCO assessment task and providing the framework together with our partner Cenex UK. Further, Cenex NL will lead the development of a web-based fleet decarbonisation strategy tool to help commercial vehicle fleets transition to battery electric vehicles with a focus on trucks and vans. Cenex NL will also support the evaluation and impact assessment, including the upscaling strategy.
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NextETRUCK has received funding from the European Union Horizon Innovation Actions programme under grant agreement No 101056740. The UK participants in this project are co-funded by the UK.
