By Ilona Wissenbach and Andrey Sychev
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) -Daimler Truck, one of the world's biggest commercial vehicle makers, aims for half of its European sales to come from electric trucks in 2030, the head of its Mercedes-Benz (OTC:MBGAF) Trucks unit, Karin Radstrom, said on Monday.
Radstrom, who is due to take the helm of the whole group next month, seeks to sell as many as 30,000 electric trucks, or half of Daimler's total vehicle sales in Europe, by the end of the decade.
"Hopefully we'll be so good that we can do even more," she said at a press conference during the IAA Transportation trade fair in Hanover.
Daimler Truck will start producing its first fully electric heavy truck Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 in November this year and has already received 2,000 orders for it.
Its outgoing CEO Martin Daum earlier on Monday said he sees no easing on the European truck market in the first half of 2025.
The group faces subdued demand after chips and other parts shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic pushed up production costs.
The trucking industry also faces challenges to reduce pollution from commercial vehicles, while logistic firms, their main clients, are unwilling to pay more for electric trucks as the charging infrastructure is still far from complete.
For Daimler Truck's technology chief Andreas Gorbach, the European Union's 45% carbon emission reduction target by 2030 seems hardly achievable with the current pace of charging infrastructure development in Europe.
He suggested that the targets should instead be coupled with the pace of infrastructure development and would be revisited every year depending on progress.
"In the past, somebody had to build the highways to have trucks on them... and the highway of the future is the charging infrastructure," Gorbach said.
"Now it is the time to switch gears, otherwise it becomes unrealistic," he added.