Merc's Electric Truck Covers 3000 km From Arctic Circle to Stuttgart

Driving a battery-electric heavy-duty distribution truck from the Arctic Circle to Stuttgart is something special – even for experienced developers.

In future, customers are not likely to use the Mercedes-Benz eActros 300 as a tractor unit for this kind of a long journey. However, being able to test the vehicle in real operation for several days at a time under the most varied climatic and topographical conditions is the best opportunity for the developers to derive measures for possible optimisation of the functions and systems.

The experts from Mercedes-Benz Trucks covered around 3,000 kilometers in March with a near-series prototype of the eActros 300 as a tractor unit. The electric truck, which was specially designed for flexible use in heavy-duty distribution haulage, celebrated its trade fair premiere at IAA Transportation 2022 in Hanover. Its start of production is scheduled for autumn this year.

Before the 3,000-kilometer journey, Mercedes-Benz Trucks engineers had already extensively tested the vehicle in winter conditions as part of the tests in Rovaniemi, Finland.

At temperatures of down to minus 25 degrees, in addition to handling on icy and snowy roads, the focus was particularly on the starting properties and protection of the drive components, software and interfaces from low temperatures. On the return journey, the main objective was to take a closer look at the eActros loaded to 25 tons in real traffic.