Mercedes-Benz eEconic and eActros review: EVs as big as the problem they face

This doesn’t look much like a car…

You’d be right. While the march towards fully electrified transport typically focuses on passenger cars – and their affordability and infrastructure – there’s another very large player on the EV scene. Both physically and metaphorically.

TopGear.com has had a brief go at haulage, demolishing a greasy bacon sandwich before clambering up the steps of a handful of Mercedes-Benz e-trucks for a taste of a swisher, more silent way of whisking our groceries up and down the land. And a glimpse of how big an ask that still seems.

By 2040, all new heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) sold in Great Britain must have zero tailpipe emissions. While this appears to give the lorry industry an additional five years over cars (whose equivalent target is currently 2035), there are much larger obstacles at play. Not least how many battery cells are needed to power a huge articulated hauler… and thus the sizeable charging break it must therefore make. Oh, and as we write there’s one single dedicated HGV charging station across the British motorway services network.

Sounds like there’s a whole range of mountains to climb.

Trucks make up around five per cent of British road traffic but 25 per cent of its emissions, so decarbonising them is an important job. But making e-HGVs attainable enough to drive that change is a big task; factor in the machines costing more than twice as much as their diesel equivalents, with a £25,000 subsidy from the government as encouragement. Pretty paltry on a purchase price of around £300,000.

“Haulage companies all work on really tight margins,” says John Granby, Director of E-Truck charging at EO Charging. “If the government want us to go green, they’re going to have to put their hand in their pocket. We’ve got some of the harshest targets and worst subsidies.”

Hasn’t the government changed recently?

We’re currently just a few weeks into a new Labour government after 14 years of Conservative power, under which the current EV mandates were all set. It’s unclear how new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer will alter things, but his pre-election manifesto pledged to restore the original 2030 ban on non-zero-emission car sales in Britain, with no indicator of how buyers will be incentivised to make that viable. Back in October, Jonathan Reynolds, then shadow business secretary, released ‘Labour’s Plan for the Automotive Sector.’

“We will inspire consumer confidence and demand by fixing charging infrastructure and developing clear battery standards consumers can understand,” the report said. “Our plans to provide clean energy by 2030 will see the industry benefit from cheap, reliable energy, and improved grid capacity.”

Enough politics. Are the lorries any good?

We drove a bunch of lorries on the hallowed surfaces of Millbrook Proving Ground, with the highlights being Mercedes’ rigid eEconic 300 and articulated eActros 300. The former – and lighter HGVs like it – will face a more stringent 2035 shift to full EV, but this particular example feels ready for some of its prospective tasks now.

While it’s in unloaded ‘superleggera’ spec in these pics, it’s primed and ready for bin lorry duties, its stonking 336kWh battery capacity fuelling not just motive power (of up to 536bhp), but Power Take Off (PTO) for all the gubbins that allow it to scoop up and digest our garbage. So while Mercedes quotes a range of up to 93 miles, up to 70 per cent of its battery capacity might be used to compact the contents of hefty city bins. Merc reckons that over 90 per cent of refuse collection routes could swap to electric vehicles right now, with a neat match between battery capacity and a typical day’s work.

The eEconic has been designed from the ground up as an EV, so its interior feels clean and spacious and its visibility vast. Its pair of motors sit at the axle while a two-speed transmission helps it navigate tricky inclines. Floor it on smooth, flat ground and there’s enough power for a slight flourish of wheelspin – not a realistic test, sure, but a sign of its potency – and after its initial, unrushed automatic gearchange, speed builds effortlessly and with linearity up to its 56mph limit. It slows down intuitively though five levels of regen, too, allowing you to broadly avoid the pedal and the learning curve its airbrakes bring.

It’s also simple enough to thread through gaps; five turns of steering from lock to lock makes it about twice as much effort as a mere car, but a modern lorry like this comes draped in cameras and sensors to smooth out the stresses of urban life. The refuse run won’t be any harder than it was before, and it’ll certainly be more hushed.

What about the bigger one?

A trip around Millbrook’s twisting, undulating Alpine Route in the articulated eActros 300 is surprisingly approachable, too. This model uses an existing platform, so there’s no interior makeover, but Mercedes claims cabin noise is halved over its diesel cab donor. It allows three drive modes – Range, Economy and Power – though its full output is always available via a kickdown button beneath its throttle. You can also manually switch between its two gears to assist with steep climbs.

While it still lumbers up Millbrook’s steepest hills, likely to the impatience of the high-performance British machinery whose development miles it briefly holds up during our visit, a diesel truck would form a similar obstacle. And the eActros otherwise glides around the tricky course with minor verve, those regen brakes soaking up any stress. It’s a fun dip of my toe into trucking without any of the infamously incessant gearchanges. Which means an almost anticlimactic lack of drama, too.

I’m betting its battery capacity isn’t yet up to a day’s work…

Opt for an eActros 300 cab and you’ll get 336kWh of battery capacity for up to 186 miles of range, while the eActros 400 adds another pack to the modular setup for 448kWh capacity and a maximum range of 249 miles. Within touching distance of the 252 miles a trucker can cover in their legally limited 4.5-hour shifts at Great Britain’s 56mph HGV limit, but crucially without the weight of a fully packed trailer countered into the calculation. A maxed-out eActros artic’ might cover closer to 100 miles in the real world. Yikes.

And with charging capacity that tops out at 160kW, a 20 to 80 per cent top up takes around 1h30, far outstripping the 45-minute break said trucker will be taking. The best they could currently hope for is a 30 per cent increase in range as they rest. What Mercedes (and other companies) see as the golden ticket is the moment HGVs and their charging infrastructure reach one megawatt (1,000kW) of charging. That would allow a full recharge during a 45-minute stop. But it feels a long way off yet.

Should I expect to see many on the road?

“Even if the government pushes back its 2040 target, companies still need to go green [on a broader scale], so they will demand it of their transport solutions,” says Granby. “The best way to do that is collaborate. You’ll eventually get Scania or Volvo drivers pulling into DAF dealers to charge. Why would you turn down a competitor truck, if you can potentially sell the owner a new one while they wait?

“Eddie Stobart used to buy diesel trucks, keep them for 18 months and then sell them at a profit as they’d bought them so cheaply in the first place. They, like others, now contract hire which can see electric HGVs cost virtually the same per month as a diesel with favourable buy-back rates.” Working for a charging network he has skin in the game, of course, but it’s hard to deny that sales need to rise. And rapidly.

Gimme some stats.

There are around 1.1m fully electric cars registered in Britain with over 60,000 charging units to help power them. Yet according to the Road Haulage Association (RHA), there are just 300 electric HGVs amongst Britain’s 500,000 lorries.

Indeed, EVs currently make up just 0.5 per cent of annual British lorry sales, where buses – with a more amenable use case and the benefit of depot charging – claim over 50 per cent. The challenge to hit those looming targets, like the lorries themselves, is vast.