Daimler is delivering a fleet of all-electric trucks to Lisbon

The electrification of trucks is happening faster than many predicted and Daimler is at the forefront of it with several recent fleet deliveries.

Now the German company’s FUSO brand is delivering a new fleet of “over ten all-electric light-duty FUSO eCanter trucks to the city administration of the Portuguese capital.”

The FUSO eCanter is meant for urban routes with a range of only 100 kilometers (62 miles) and a load capacity up to three and a half tons – depending on body and usage. The vehicle is powered by an electric powertrain with six high voltage lithium ion battery packs with 420 V and 13.8 kWh each for a total of ~83 kWh of capacity.

Despite its limited capacity, the vehicle is well suited to many applications and can still help reduce local emissions.

The city of Lisbon was part of a test program with FUSO’s electric trucks back in 2015 and now they think it offers enough capacity for city work:

“The city of Lisbon uses the vehicles for municipal gardening trips and for waste disposal. With the FUSO eCanter, Lisbon is hoping to contribute to the reduction of local noise and emission pollution caused by commercial vehicles used in urban areas.”

With this new deployment, the FUSO eCanter is now in use in six cities around the world in Tokyo, New York, Berlin, London, Amsterdam as well as Lisbon.

In Europe, DHL and several other logistics companies are using the all-electric truck. In the US, UPS has started operating a small fleet in New York as part of its many electrification initiatives.

While Daimler is ramping up the FUSO eCanter program, it is only one of several all-electric truck programs from the large truck maker.

Under FUSO, it also has the bigger all-electric eTruck, which has a 26 ton capacity, a massive 212 kWh battery pack, and ~125 miles of range.

Daimler also recently unveiled new electric truck programs under its Freightliner brand: an electric eCascadia semi truck to compete with Tesla Semi and a smaller electric M2 106.

Those trucks are expected to go into volume production in the next few years, but like with the eCanter, Daimler is already starting to deliver small fleets to customers as part of its development program.