MAN Truck & Bus and energy company E.ON will build around 170 locations with around 400 stations for public charging of electric trucks across Europe.

The new charging stations will be built along the existing MAN service network and will also be able to charge commercial vehicles from other manufacturers. Around 125 sites are planned in Germany alone.

This partnership will create the largest nationwide public charging network for heavy commercial vehicles in the country to date. Additional sites are being built in Austria, the UK, Denmark, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

“For the mobility transition to be successful, we need around 50,000 charging points for heavy commercial vehicles in Europe by 2030,” said Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus.

“As a manufacturer of electric trucks, we are of course making our contribution to this. I am delighted that E.ON is now a strong partner for the electrification of our service locations.

“We are thus laying another foundation stone for a public charging network. However, we still urgently need the support of policymakers to build this network on a large scale,” he said.

Europe has set itself the goal of reducing emissions from heavy commercial vehicles by 90 percent by 2040. Leonhard Birnbaum, CEO of E.ON, said electric mobility is a central key to achieving this goal.

“We are investing heavily to give the infrastructure for electric heavy goods transport a decisive boost and to set the course for sustainable logistics and green supply chains. Nearly all major manufacturers are now focusing their development efforts on electric mobility,” he said.

“For the final breakthrough, we need a high-performance charging infrastructure that is designed on a European scale. We are delighted to be leading the way together with MAN.”

The new sites will be located at strategically selected MAN service bases, primarily in industrial areas with high truck volumes or near motorways. This means that public charging can be easily integrated into daily operations.

The layout of the sites is specially designed for charging electric commercial vehicles: This includes a drive-through facility through the charging station so that trucks and buses do not have to maneuver. Wherever possible, the stations are installed in separate areas from the MAN service operations – with separate entrances and exits for the charging area – to ensure that they are accessible to the public, regardless of the make of vehicle. During the day, drivers also benefit from the existing infrastructure, such as sanitary facilities and recreation rooms.

The sites will be built in a modular fashion. As a first step, each site will be equipped with several 400kW charging stations. This will allow an average electric truck to recharge for a range of up to 300km in about 45 minutes. Later, the sites will be upgraded to the MCS megawatt charging system.

The first 80 sites of the new charging network are to be built by the end of 2025.