MAN Truck & Bus and ABB E-mobility have signed an exclusive cooperation agreement. The aim of the strategic partnership is to work even more closely together, particularly in the area of development with the "Megawatt charging system" (MCS) as the start of strategic collaboration. The cooperation is initially scheduled to run for three years and focusses on the customer experience in addition to the internal development and further development of charging stations, vehicles and software.
The importance of cross-industry cooperation for the entire sector is particularly evident for megawatt charging system (MCS), as Thomas Nickels (left), Senior Vice President Engineering at MAN, explains. "At MCS, we are working with players from the entire sector to enable charging capacities in the megawatt range in the future and thus sustainable and economical long-distance heavy goods and passenger transport. By cooperating with ABB E-mobility, we can tackle the challenges of the new technology at an early stage and drive standardisation forward more quickly." He states that these challenges include the ISO15118-20 communication standard and new ways of transmitting signals. The basis for megawatt charging
is Ethernet communication, which is being used for the first time in electromobility. Early software and interoperability tests with vehicles and charging stations should help to establish reliable products as quickly as possible in an emerging market environment. "High charging performance, reliable technology and customer confidence - these are the prerequisites for the success of electromobility in heavy goods and long-distance passenger transport. We want to jointly develop a concept for the interaction of MCS and CCS that addresses issues such as space, energy supply and grid expansion", says Floris van de Klashorst, Senior Vice President Products & Hardware Platforms at ABB E-mobility.