Electric forklift trucks are the trend

For STILL, electric forklift trucks are the long-term future of intralogistics. Sales of electric trucks in Europe have been higher than those of internal combustion engine trucks since 2009. STILL sees this as a sustained trend, which is why it wants to offer its customers advice in that respect. Operators should comprehend and understand this trend so they can already adjust to and make long-term plans for the trend today. Through its “Mission: Zero Emission” campaign STILL provides information about why there is a trend towards electric trucks, why IC-trucks are nonetheless not superfluous, and why customers are well advised in using STILL trucks.

Anyone who looks in detail at the European sales figures for trucks in recent years will discover that for about the past five years more electric trucks have been sold in Western Europe than trucks with an internal combustion engine. Even in Eastern Europe, where IC-trucks once clearly dominated, their lead has shrunk to a minimum since 2009. For STILL GmbH this development is understandable and pleasing. After all, the brand not only represents a leading supplier of intralogistics solutions worldwide but has also offered a wide portfolio of efficient electric and IC-trucks for many decades.

Therefore STILL has a particular interest in explaining to potential customers the background to the increasing trend towards electric power and in giving them optimum advice for future decisions. STILL is doing this through the counterbalanced truck campaign “Mission: Zero Emission”. 

The rule of thumb in the past was “E-trucks for indoor use and IC-trucks for out of doors”. Although this rule of thumb became obsolete long ago, nonetheless the trend has strengthened noticeably again since 2009. The causes of this are the three essential drivers of the trend. Firstly: electric forklift trucks are becoming ever more powerful and are penetrating increasingly into areas of use previously reserved for IC-trucks. Secondly: E-trucks protect the environment and employees’ health because they operate without emitting any pollutants at all. Thirdly: diesel fuel is an increasingly scarce resource that will unquestionably become ever more costly in the medium to long term despite its current low price. Battery-powered trucks are already convincing even now through their distinctly lower operating costs. 

At the same time, the rising sales of E-trucks does not mean that internal combustion engine trucks will soon be obsolete. On the contrary: trucks powered by diesel or LPG will remain without any alternative in certain areas of use in the foreseeable future. “Mission: Zero Emission” explains not only which those areas are, but also why in this case customers are well advised to use STILL’s RX 70 series of diesel trucks, not just for environmental reasons, and can minimise their costs at the same time.

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Whereas many suppliers install particulate filters on their trucks as standard to meet the increasingly stringent European Exhaust Emission Standard, the use of such a filter is quite unnecessary on almost all STILL RX 70 trucks. In the first place, due to the efficient diesel-electric drive system, STILL trucks don’t produce so much pollutants as to need downstream exhaust gas filtering – surely the most comprehensive solution from the environmental viewpoint. On top of that, RX 70 trucks score points with the lowest consumption figures compared to the competition. STILL’s Chief Sales Officer and Marketing Director Thomas A. Fischer says “For STILL, environmentally friendly, economical propulsion technologies and sustainable, intelligent efficiency are clearly the industry’s future. In the context of the “Mission: Zero Emission” campaign we want to show our customers that STILL is a trailblazer and the optimum partner for them in this area.”