[INTERVIEW] MAN Truck & Bus focuses on customer satisfaction, scalability

MAN Truck & Bus will deliver its first electric truck to Korea in 2025, which will be able to travel almost two times further on a single charge compared to its competitors.

Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, talks during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on March 14 in Incheon. [MAN TRUCK & BUS]

MAN Truck & Bus will deliver its first electric truck to Korea in 2025, which will be able to travel almost two times further on a single charge compared to its competitors.

Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, is confident that the new truck will help the company regain the trust of and satisfy Korean customers, one of his focuses after a big recall in 2021.

“We plan to bring our eTruck to Korea in 2025, which can travel some 800 kilometers [497 miles] per single charge,” Vlaskamp said. “But only when we can confirm that it is affordable and scalable for our customers who use our truck to earn money every day.”

The German commercial vehicle company in September 2021 voluntarily recalled its products installed with the Euro 6A, 6B and 6C engines due to possible defects in the engine’s core components such as oil separators and engine brakes. Some 4,400 vehicles including the TGS cargo truck, TGX tractor and TGS dump truck were affected by the latest recall.

With a 260-year history, MAN is the largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in Europe. Having first entered Korea in 2001, MAN offers five truck lineups in the local market.

In 2017, MAN chose to base its Asia-Pacific regional headquarters in Korea — in Yongin, Gyeonggi — as the country has emerged as the biggest market in the region.

Vlaskamp recently sat down with the Korea JoongAng Daily to share his vision for the company and strategies for the Korean market.

Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

Alexander Vlaskamp, CEO of MAN Truck & Bus, talks during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on March 14 in Incheon. [MAN TRUCK & BUS]

Q. What made you pick Korea for the Asian headquarters?A.Roughly one-third to 40 percent of MAN’s Asia-Pacific sales come from Korean customers. The customer demands here are very much focused on the truck, but also very much on the services.

The Korean market is a very good base for our team to have this experience to make sure that we have it well operating here, and with that team, we can support them in many other markets such as Malaysia and Singapore. You will bring your first electric truck to Korea in 2025?

That's still the plan. We always check three things in advance: Availability, affordability and scalability. Is the infrastructure in Korea available to have an electric truck, or do our customers really want it when operating their business?

And then it's a question of cost calculation whether the truck is affordable for our customers. Customers in Korea earn money with our truck every day.

MAN Truck & Bus's electric heavy truck disclosed in Germany in May [MAN TRUCK & BUS]

It's been about a year since the massive recalls. How's that going?

I think it was a very important decision to bring this customer satisfaction by starting this voluntary recall. And the good thing is that it's been progressing 65 percent now.

The recalls are expected to be fully completed in September. You also said that MAN will introduce autonomous-driving trucks in early 2030. But some think that it will take away millions of jobs. What are your thoughts on this?

In terms of autonomous driving, I think MAN is a very good example of how to actually support the driver, increase road safety and improve their well-being.

For instance, in the Port of Hamburg, where we are running the pilot service, the drivers arrive at the container terminal and leave the truck. Then the truck, fully autonomous, goes into the container terminal, unloading and offloading, by itself. So, it gives the drivers a 45-minute or an hour break to recharge their batteries and carry on.

And those might also be very good examples for container terminals in Busan. So, from this angle, it's actually more support of the trials for road safety than risking their jobs.

Latest TGX series from MAN Truck & Bus [MAN TRUCK & BUS]

What level of autonomous driving are you considering for your future truck?

We speak about Level 4, and I think we are at some 95 percent success. But the last 5 percent is the most difficult part.

Hyundai Motor developed the hydrogen fuel-cell bus and BMW also followed the hydrogen fuel-cell strategy. What’s your stance on hydrogen-powered vehicles?

Hydrogen can be a part of the solution. But we see that we need some 10 years more for it to actually be common. Infrastructure has to be in place first. And 1 kilogram [2.2 pounds] of green hydrogen is still very expensive and the availability of green hydrogen is also still very limited. That might come first in the second part of the next decade.

Hydrogen can be a solution in the long term, but we believe that the predominant solution is going to electric vehicles at the moment. .

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]