Daimler is one of a class of truck manufacturers making a case to commercial fleet owners to pivot to zero-emissions vehicles. It just wrapped its first full year as an independent business spun off from the corporate parent of Mercedes-Benz, and it has sought to take advantage of its stable balance sheet and cache in an increasingly crowded market.
Through Freightliner — which has the largest heavy truck market share in the U.S. — and Western Star, Daimler has an extensive dealer and service network, diesel and zero-emissions truck options and a well-established supply chain. The emphasis on Daimler’s long history and network has a clear message: It is the adult in the room compared to the passel of struggling zero-emission commercial vehicle startups.
Its capital markets day had none of the bluster and braggadocio of the American startups. A video about the company’s advanced driver-assist technology did open with wailing guitar riffs, but they were abruptly lowered to a barely audible volume so the audience could hear from Joanna Butler, the head of the global autonomous technology group at Daimler Truck. Even the pump-up music was polite.
Daimler had, by any measure, great news for its investors — its sales had increased by 9 percent from a year earlier, and therefore the company was boosting its return on sales guidance for the whole business and for each of its industrial segments. It announced the buyback and reported that it expects even greater returns on sales for the industrial business by 2030.
But pragmatism was a common thread. Executives returned repeatedly to a resonant simile in which the zero-emissions transition is like a multiplication equation. If one of the three variables — trucks, infrastructure or cost parity — is nonexistent, or a zero, the outcome will be nonexistent as well. Daimler’s leaders warned that success was not guaranteed, but they expressed an unwillingness to be the weakest link.
The company posits itself as a jack of all trades. The right solution “strongly depends on the transportation costs, on the cost of hydrogen, on the cost of electricity, of regional regulations and subsidies,” said Andreas Gorbach, the head of truck technology at Daimler. “This is why we need different technological answers.”
