This weekend's Clash will be the first NASCAR race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and when a Freightliner eCascadia electric truck pulling the No. 2 Discount Tire Ford/Freightliner trailer arrived at the grounds of the venue Thursday it marked another first—the first electric tractor to pull a NASCAR Cup Series hauler to a race.
The arrival of the race car by the eCascadia was the culmination over three years of collaboration between Team Penske, Penske Truck Leasing and Daimler Trucks North America in developing the fully electric truck in an effort to demonstrate the companies' efforts to reduce harmful carbon emissions from the air.
Right now 10 pre-production eCascadias are in use along with 10 pre-production Freightliner eM2 electric box trucks as part of delivery routes run daily for Penske Truck Leasing customers.
The race car's journey began in Mooresville, N. Car. in a diesel powered hauler which brought to a Penske Leasing location in Ontario, Calif. That's where the electric eCascadia took over, first bringing the trailer to a nearby track for staging, then the last 50 miles or so to the Coliseum.
The idea of bringing freight across country in a diesel vehicle and then positioning electric vehicles on the outskirts of a city, in this case, L.A., and then doing that final mile delivery with an electric vehicle is something when you think about the air quality around these highly populated areas like L.A., said Bill Combs, Penske Vice President, Sustainability in an interview. “Any time you can reduce tailpipe emissions within those city limits, and the county of L.A., in this case, the better.”
The eCascadia tractor and more box-like eM2 truck are two pre-production battery electric commercial vehicles Freightliner is developing. Both are being built at Daimler Truck's Portland, Oregon plant.
The eCascadia, with a range of about 250 miles, is scheduled to go into production later this year. The eM2 goes into production during calendar year 2023 with an initial range of about 230 miles, according to Mary Aufdemberg, General Manager, Product Strategy and Market Development at Daimler Truck North America.
“In the near term the truck going into production is for regional haul, pickup and delivery, food and beverage,short haul,” Aufdemberg told Forbes.com. “As the technology becomes more mature we'll be moving into the longer haul space.”
Production of the two electric trucks comes as Daimler Truck looks to reduce its carbon footprint. Its Portland plant is carbon neutral, according to Aufdemberg, and the company's intent is for all of its plants to reach that milestone by 2025 and its vehicles to be carbon neutral by 2039, she said.
Penske Truck Leasing has played a key role in development of the eCascadia tractor and eM2 truck operating 10 of each and providing feedback to Daimler Truck over the course of 480,000 miles driven delivering everything from industrial and hospital products to store deliveries of food and beverage items.
“We've been doing similar types of hauling for three years since 2018 working with our customers so Penske Truck Leasing is sort of the enabler of the vehicle,” said Combs.
To support its growing use of electric trucks and promote their use by their customers Penske Truck Leasing has installed 20 charging positions at seven locations in Southern California with more planned this year and in future years.
“As the vehicles become available we plan to remain a leader in this commercial battery electric transportation area. We want to put as many of these vehicles on the road as we can,” said Combs. “We absolutely want to move this out to other areas of the country.”
When Team Penske's car hits the track for Sunday's race it'll burn gallons of fuel, but not a drop was used to get it those final 50 miles.
As a Team Penske spokesman put it to Forbes.com, “We're really trying to tell that story about how our race team in particular working with some of our partners across the board are moving toward that sustainability, that next chapter, and how we can be better environmental stewards.”
