We are to see all electric vans by Mercedes-Benz. The automaker recently announced of its intentions and to support the claim it has introduced an all-electric van called eVito, which can travel about 93 miles on a single charge!!
According to the German auto conjunction this all electric feature would soon be embedded to all the commercial vans in the coming years. eVito would be the starter here in 2018, followed by the 2019 e-variants the eSprinter and Citan. A pledge of investing a total of 50 million euros (about $176.2 million) has been made by Mercedes-Benz Vans.
The whole idea of the electrifying the vans begins with the eVito. The van has successfully gauged a an all electric range of 93 miles per charge. It has he max speed around 75 mph and with it the stunning capability to carry loads up to 2200 pounds or more. According to the Automaker, with a full payload the van’s range goes down to around 62 miles. At the same time it mentioned that the full charge would take roughly 6 hours.
“We are convinced by the necessity of electric drive in our vans, especially in city center applications,” said Volker Mornhinweg, Head of Mercedes-Benz Vans, in a statement. “That said, electrification of the commercial fleet is not an end in itself, but follows the same principles as a classic drive when it comes to profitability. With our eDrive@VANs initiative, we’re showing that only holistic mobility solutions extending beyond the drive itself present a real alternative for commercial customers. The eVito is the starting point and will be followed by the new -generation of our Sprinter as well as the Citan.”
Daimler has had an excellent past in the auto industry and has arguably been one of the most aggressive established automakers to pursue electrification. Yet they have some tough competition in the market from couple of other auto giants.
Along with Mercedes, some other automakers too plan on some big deals this month. Promised to invest $40 billion on electric and hydrogen powered vehicles was Volkswagen for you earlier this month. Whereas the General Motors is making moves to launch 20 electric cars by 2023.
Then there is Tesla and UPS, both with the same motive as Daimler and Mercedes; to convert the vehicles to all electric. UPS has a motive to convert 1500 of its trucks all electric by 2020.. Whereas Tesla is using Model X and Model S designs to redesigns their service vans.
It would be interesting to see how this all turns out to be, considering we have got some major players going against each other in the market, some great results in the auto world are expected.