Commercial vehicle manufacturers, Volvo Group, Daimler Truck, and Volkswagen's Traton Group have partnered to build and operate a high-performance public charging network for battery electric heavy-duty trucks and buses across Europe.

The parties intend to establish a separate equally-owned joint-venture (JV) based in the Netherlands for the project that will be operational from 2022. The companies plan to invest EUR 500 million (USD 593 million) to install at least 1,700 charging points within five years. More charging points will then be added after the initial five-year period through public funding and bringing on additional partners.

The project supports European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA)’s pledge to operate up to 15,000 charging stations by 2025 and 50,000 by 2030. It will also support the European Union's goal of making freight transportation carbon-neutral by 2050.

Volvo Group, Daimler Truck, and Traton (a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group) are well-established commercial vehicle manufacturers with strong presence in the truck tech space. Daimler develops battery-electric trucks, named “eCascadia” and “eM2,” which were made available for preorder in April 2021, with production set to begin in late 2022. Volvo Trucks develops battery-electric heavy-duty “Volvo FH”, “Volvo FM,” and “Volvo FMX” trucks, with plans to start mass production in 2022. Meanwhile, in March this year, Traton Group announced its plans to focus on electric trucks, by investing a total of EUR 1.6 billion (USD 1.9 billion) in research and development of the same by 2025.