Renault reveals an electric truck

Renault Trucks and Groupe Delanchy have developed an all-electric truck equipped with a refrigerated box for fresh produce deliveries, which was on display at Solutrans.

Groupe Delanchy is a really interesting company. A family-owned business that specialises in the transport and logistics of seafood and fresh produce, it employs 3 000 people and operates 900 trucks. Its vehicles cover some 400 000 km every single day – equivalent to a single trip to the moon! Isn’t that impressive?

Now it will be using this low-noise, non-polluting 100-percent electric 13-t Renault Trucks D experimental vehicle on a daily basis to deliver produce to Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse (France’s largest covered food market).

The vehicle is equipped with a Chereau temperature-controlled box and a Carrier refrigeration unit, fully powered by the vehicle’s traction batteries: a first on this type of truck.

Although being an experimental vehicle, this 13-t electric truck will be used under real operating conditions in Lyon, the historic birthplace of Renault Trucks. This city has also played an important part in Groupe Delanchy’s history: with the introduction of its first route in 1968, fresh produce could to be transported from Lorient to Lyon in less than 24 hours.

“We are very pleased with the arrival of this new 100-percent electric truck,” Joseph Delanchy, president of Groupe Delanchy, told FOCUS.

“It is a result of our long-standing partnership with Renault Trucks and shows the commitment we have made to our customers, our employees and, more broadly, for future generations. This ‘zero-emission’ truck is a first step towards new technologies that are evolving very rapidly. We will evolve with them, as we have always done.”

Is this low-noise, non-polluting 100-percent electric 13-t experimental vehicle a sign of things to come, or will gas prevail? Read more about this debate in Issue 12 of FOCUS!