The electric vehicle revolution came to the streets of Munich, Germany this week in the form of a 40-ton, all-electric, 18-wheeler truck.
The latest in BMW’s line of electric vehicles, the vehicle can travel 62 miles (100 kilometers) with a full battery, requires 3 to 4 hours to fully charge, and will exclusively be powered “with electricity from renewable sources,” the German auto giant says.
The truck will be used by the car company to transport vehicle components two miles across Munich seven times a day. BMW has test-driven the truck and says it is optimistic that it will be able to go a full working day on a single charge.
As countries reduce emissions with alternative energy sources, the European Commission has found that transportation is the only large sector in the EU in which greenhouse gases continue to rise. Though emissions fell by 3.3% in 2012, they are still 20.5% higher than they were in 1990. About a fifth of the EU’s CO2 emissions come from road transportation, and while most of that comes from ”light-duty” vehicles, cars, and vans, 6% of all CO2 emissions in Europe can be traced back to “heavy-duty” vehicles, trucks and buses.
Compared with a regular diesel-fueled truck, the all-electric truck will save an estimated 11.8 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere annually, BMW says.
Still, the limited range of the electric truck means that it won’t be practical for the longer hauls that are characteristic of American truck driving.