Truck and bus manufacturer MAN has laid out its sustainability goals for the coming decades, as it commits to a greenhouse gas neutral balance sheet by 2050.
The company says that sustainability has become a key focus of its corporate strategy for the first time in its 100+ year history, and says it will reach its net-zero goal by focusing on the de-carbonisation of its truck and bus fleets in operation.
MAN estimates that 97% of its greenhouse gas emissions comes from the use of these fleets, and it aims to tackle this environmental issue by ramping up production of fully-electric trucks and buses. “By the end of the decade, at least half of the vehicles we sell in the EU will be electric”, says MAN Truck & Bus CEO Alexander Vlaskamp.
The brand introduced an all-electric ‘Lion’s City E’ bus in 2020, which has been working itself into UK circulation with around 1,000 units in operation so far. The company’s truck range is combustion-only at the moment, but MAN has plans to start production on electric heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) by 2024.
These ‘E-Trucks’ are planned to offer 375 miles to 500 miles of range on one charge – a very ambitious estimate considering that rivals such as DAF currently offer electric HGVs that can muster around 125 miles on a full battery.
Other than the electric avenue, MAN also says that it is working with partners on the development of a hydrogen-powered truck – a net-zero solution that Volvo Group has recently announced that it was testing.
In light of MAN’s larger 2050 net-zero goal, the company is also aiming to reduce its production missions to half of its 2015 levels by 2025. By 2030, the manufacturer plans to cut its production CO2 emissions by 95%.
While this sounds like a large contribution to the sustainability strategy as a whole, the company’s own figures display that the production process only accounts for a small fraction of overall CO2 emissions.
When it comes to fleet operation, the most important contribution to lowering emissions, MAN has a 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre driven by 28%, based on 2019 figures.
