VW Teams Up with Navistar to Introduce Medium-Duty Electric Truck in 2019

www.chinatrucks.com: Navistar has announced from the North American Commercial Vehicle Show that, together with Volkswagen Truck & Bus, it will introduce a new electric medium-duty truck.

Earlier this year, Navistar and Volkswagen Truck & Bus formed an alliance to jointly develop various vehicle power-trains – including plug-ins. VW now owns 16.6% of Navistar.

The first all-electric project, a medium-duty vehicle, is launching at just about the right time to catch onto the growing interest in electric trucks.

Navistar plans to introduce the truck in late 2019 or early 2020, with the target market for the vehicle to be the U.S. and Canada.

The Class 6 or 7 etruck is aimed city delivery customers and will have a range of just over 110 miles (180 km) with a payload of about 18 tons.

Troy A. Clarke, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Navistar said:

“Our alliance with Volkswagen Truck & Bus is allowing us to move much more quickly into electric propulsion thanks to our ability to leverage their technology investments and components in segments of the market where we’re already a leader. We believe the Class 6/7 vehicle is ideal for electric powertrain solutions in the near term, given its abundance of packaging space, and that these vehicles typically run short distances and can depot to recharge at the end of the day.”

However, we should not attribute too much importance to the announcement of electrification, as Navistar is also developing new conventional products, which are still its main business; it remains to be seen what the outcome (and volume) of this project will ultimately be.