Daimler Trucks CEO Martin Daum said in an interview on Sunday that the cost of electric trucks will “always be higher” than trucks using internal combustion engines because the Russian Ukrainian war has exacerbated rising raw material costs.
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“If you put the engine, transmission, axles, fuel tank system, cooling system…” Martin Daum said, “We (an internal combustion engine truck) need at most about 25,000 euros of materials” “25,000 euros can change how many batteries?
“Even if [the cost of the battery drops to] 60 euros per kWh and I need 400 kWh, then [a truck] costs 24,000 euros for the battery alone”.
Daum said the government should step up to subsidize electric vehicles to deal with rising costs. “Without any subsidy, the price of electric trucks will always be higher than internal combustion engine trucks.”
Moreover, Daum’s comments come after Daimler Truck reported that sales of zero-emission trucks and buses more than tripled last year to 712. Daimler Trucks is the first company to enter the electric vehicle market and has been producing electric vehicles since 2017.
However, this is only a fraction of the 455,000 trucks and buses the company will deliver in 2021. The long-range eActros, the company’s long-range eActros, which began mass production last year, still cost three times as much as an internal combustion engine, and the gap is unlikely to close significantly anytime soon.
Furthermore, prices for key raw materials used in modern batteries have surged in the past year, with cobalt and lithium more than doubling in price and nickel up nearly 40%, according to IHS Markit.
