Friday a new project was launched by the City of Mechelen, giving us the opportunity to test sustainable vehicles free of charge. This is part of the goal to strive for zero-emission urban logistics by the year 2030. 37 logistics companies signed a covenant for this purpose.
The figures don’t lie: 25% of CO emissions caused by transport come from goods transport and services. Logistics transport also plays a role in traffic jams, traffic safety, space occupation and noise pollution.
We are offered four different vehicles for free to test out. This way we can experience the advantages and disadvantages in practice, anticipate and prepare for the future.
Our CEO Louis De Wael likes the fact that this way we can make a good assessment of the impact of the switch to electric transport. “We are one of the stakeholders in Mechelen’s zero-emission covenant. Every day we investigate how to achieve that goal. This project gives us very pertinent and useful information from the shop floor. Many companies still have reservations and doubts about this conversion. Besides the purchase price, which is three times as high as for a diesel truck, there are questions about range, need for charging infrastructure, sustainable energy supply on site, loading capacity, etc. We will get a lot of concrete answers to these questions. So we can make a good estimate of the practical and financial impact. I definitely see a future for the electric truck in the logistics chain. There are already trucks with a range of 500 kilometers”.
