Keynote by Alexander Vlaskamp (CEO, MAN Truck & Bus) IAA TRANSPORTATION 2022

Thank you, Sarah, for this nice introduction. Dear Minister Altusman, dear industry partners, dear ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to be speaking to you here today right after the official start and our press conference yesterday here at the IAA. It's great to be in touch again, and it feels electrified to meet many of you and to bring electrification to our customers and visitors. On the press day yesterday, most of my interviews were circling around how, when, and from where we will do electrification. That is the talk of the town, and that is what I will be talking about today. First of all, there is strong consensus that man-made emissions and greenhouse gases are our responsibility, especially in industrialized countries, to fix. With the massive innovation on display here in Germany and from international exhibitors, we can fix this. If we don't succeed, we will destroy livelihoods beyond 2050. We want to meet the Paris Agreement to secure a sustainable planet for future generations. That is what drives us at MAN Truck and Bus. The European Union has defined the climate agreement to become climate neutral, which gives us legal certainty and the ability to plan for the future. To meet climate-neutral transport by 2050, we have to start today, here and now. We have to switch over from fossil fuels. As a manufacturer of commercial vehicles, we are called upon to deliver because 98% of our greenhouse gases are produced during the operational time of our products when trucks and buses go into operation at our customers. Only about 2% come from production and materials. So we focus first on the use case. Looking back, vehicles have become cleaner. Between 1995 and 2019, 26% of CO2 emissions were saved in heavy truck transportation. However, this efficiency gain per unit has been wiped away by the growth of society, as total transport grew by 78% in the same period. As the globe grows, transportation will increase, and we must make it sustainable. To deliver on the fleet 2050 climate-neutral goal, we have to deliver no fossil drivelines from 2040 onward. Biofuels and synthetic fuels are possible but conversion costs are too expensive. The better solution is battery electric vehicles. Later, green hydrogen could serve as a range extender, but it's not available at attractive prices. We are testing hydrogen combustion engines and fuel cells, but green hydrogen molecules are not yet available at cost parity. Filling up with hydrogen today costs 13-14 euros per kilo and is mostly from natural gas, not sustainable. Therefore, we will switch over much earlier to pure battery electric drives in our trucks and buses. With battery electric, we utilize 70-75% of the output energy from wind or solar directly into the drive, which is much more efficient and cheaper than hydrogen. Green hydrogen is also too volatile in availability for the next 10-15 years and should be reserved for green steel and chemicals. So at MAN Truck and Bus, we see that e beats h2 for the years to come. We are focusing on electrification, building on our experience. We delivered hybrid buses since 2011, and our Lion's City electric bus won the range champion award for 550 km in city operations. Our European tour from Munich to Limerick showed that city bus travel across Europe is possible with existing charging infrastructure. We have gained experience with small series of all-electric distribution trucks in many use cases, and our TGE all-electric vans complete the portfolio with over 1,000 units cruising cities. Now we are on the brink to electrify our truck range. We showed it yesterday at our press conference. We are ready to roll out a battery electric truck range in 2024, including the megawatt charging standard. The centerpiece is a new vehicle battery optimized for heavy load traffic and long endurance up to 1.5 to 2 million kilometers. It contains up to six battery packs mounted modularly along the chassis for different use cases. This allows our customers to step into electrification without worry. The megawatt charging capability is necessary to operate up to 800 kilometers per day, recharging during the required 45-minute break to 70-80%. Battery development is fast-paced. We see improvements in chemicals and through our battery software we can condition the battery longer and prevent premature recycling. We are scaling up production with a 100 million euro investment in a battery plant in Nuremberg by 2025, producing seamlessly on the same line in Munich alongside conventional vehicles. This flexible production can scale up to 150 trucks per day. Now we need the missing link: the infrastructure for electrons to flow at depot logistics and along highways. We call on politics to pave the way. We are already taking a lead through a joint venture with Scania, Volvo Group, and Daimler to build 1,700 charging locations around main roads in Europe in the next five years. But we need political support to break down bureaucracy and get green electrons from wind and solar into the trucks. This is the biggest challenge. Let's make sure we don't delay. MAN Truck and Bus has the buses and truck range, concepts for megawatt charging, and investments in charging locations. We need politics to drive onward. Let's deliver a zero-emission future tomorrow. Thank you very much.