IVECO & ZF Logistics further deploy natural gas trucks on German routes
Today’s long-distance trucks are mostly diesel-fueled – due, in the main, to the more costly and limited availability of most alternative drivetrains and respective infrastructures. The exception is natural gas. Thus, ZF Logistics and Iveco have joined forces to help freight forwarders operating on behalf of ZF to use cost-efficient natural gas-powered freight trucks, thereby achieving greater climate protection with significantly lower emissions.
At the end of 2018, the natural gas truck project was initiated at the board level of both partners. In 2019, Spedition Lakner began serving routes between the ZF plants in Friedrichshafen and the ZF casting plant in Nuremberg, using three LNG trucks. This summer, logistics service provider, DB Schenker, began using LNG vehicles on the heavily used ZF Schweinfurt–Saarbrücken route. During this time, ZF has also been operating 20 Iveco natural gas trucks – with this number expected to double by the end of this year.
In recent months logistics company Duvenbeck has also taken over the local transport between ZF locations in Saarland, with the use of 11 Iveco trucks equipped with a 460 HP LNG engine and the ZF TraXon transmission system. Sustainable logistics based on the use of natural gas has been supported by other partners: Berlin-based start-up, Liquind, opened a mobile LNG station in Sankt Ingbert, Saarland, in May 2020, thus ensuring a local fuel supply. And since October, Zureck Logistik GmbH has been operating a CNG truck as part of its fleet at the ZF site in Brandenburg an der Havel.
“Making road traffic emission-free is a key objective of our ‘Next Generation Mobility’ strategy,” said Wilhelm Rehm, Member of the ZF Board of Management responsible for Materials Management, Commercial Vehicle Technology, and Industrial Technology. “We want to contribute to this with our technologies as well as in our own production and supply chain. The use of natural gas-powered trucks is a ZF contribution to climate protection.”
ZF has set itself the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2040 – 10 years earlier than current EU regulations stipulate. To support this goal, the company is addressing all three scopes of the greenhouse gas protocol: Scopes 1 and 2 relating to emissions from in-house production and the purchase of power; and Scope 3 relating to the environmental impact of products and emissions from the entire value chain.
ZF’s natural gas-based logistics could soon become an export model. The company is optimistic it will reach its self-imposed target of 200 natural gas trucks serving local and long-distance logistics between its plants by 2025 – a tenfold increase over the next five years.