South African Breweries (SAB), part of the ABInBev family, launched its first electric commercial vehicle, named Mitsubishi Fuso eCanter, at its Chamdor Brewery in Krugersdorp on the 16th of January.
Electrification of its fleet is part of ABInBev’s 2025 sustainability goals, which also include the company’s global renewable energy initiative, which will see the company powering all of its plants with 100% renewable energy by 2025.
We are seeing more and more companies going electric on their delivery routes like, Greenspoon in Kenya added electric vans on its delivery routes.
The unit economics definitely make sense. According to Mitsubishi, the eCanter offers savings of up to €1000 per 10,000 km on operational costs compared to an equivalent diesel truck.
Large fleet operators in Africa will benefit significantly by increasing the penetration of electric vehicles in their fleets.
This electrification of vehicles in this segment makes a lot of sense, as most of the vehicles in this segment are usually deployed on city routes. The start-stop nature of these routes is perfect for electric trucks like the eCanter since the truck’s utilization will be able to take full advantage of regenerative braking.
The eCanter has six Mercedes-Benz liquid-cooled, high voltage, 13.8 kWh lithium-ion batteries that come together to make an 82.8 kWh pack that has a usable capacity of 66 kWh.
It’s great that it also comes with an actively cooled battery, especially in hot and sunny South Africa. This should assure users of excellent battery health in the long term.
It’s great to see large corporations with large fleets starting to adopt electric vehicles in this part of the world. We hope this will inspire a “Keeping up with the Joneses” phenomenon that will drive other corporations to transition to electric mobility on the African continent.
Reference- Clean Technica, South African Breweries PR