MAN Truck & Bus

Strategy

A MAN Truck on the road

MAN at a glance

MAN Truck & Bus is one of Europe's leading commercial vehicle manufacturers and providers of transport solutions with an annual sales revenue of around 13.7 billion euros (2024). The company’s product portfolio includes trucks and buses/coaches with diesel and zero-emission drives, vans, diesel and gas engines along with services related to passenger and cargo transport. MAN Truck & Bus is a company of TRATON GROUP and employs approx. 33,000 people worldwide.

Our vision

„Simplifying customer business through leading sustainable solutions.“

Our strategy

The commercial vehicle industry is facing major challenges: In the future, vehicles will be increasingly autonomous, connected and have lower emissions. We are seizing this opportunity to systematically realign our company. The foundation for this is our MAN strategy. It consists of the ‘Robust Company’, ‘Smart Innovator’ and ‘Strong Team’ pillars and sets the direction for the coming years. Our North Star is a fully autonomous, emission-free vehicle by the end of this decade.

What else is behind the MAN strategy?

At MAN, we want to create competitive and flexible structures in order to become robust and resilient and to remain so even in times of crisis (‘Robust Company’). We will focus clearly on the development of new technologies and, in addition to our own innovative strength, we will rely on strong partnerships within the TRATON GROUP and VW (‘Smart Innovator’). We will achieve this by ensuring that all employees play their part in our joint success – as a ‘Strong Team’. Sustainability is also part of MAN's strategic focus as a key business driver of the future.

MAN 2022 has therefore anchored the topic of sustainability in its corporate strategy and is committed to achieving balance sheet greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 at the latest. The company has committed to this as part of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) climate protection initiative. As a first step, 70 per cent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are to be reduced at the global sites by 2030 compared to 2019. GHG fleet emissions per vehicle kilometre of trucks, buses and vans sold by MAN are to be reduced by 28% by 2030 compared to the base year 2019. The most important component of the greenhouse gas reduction strategy is the decarbonisation of road freight transport by electrifying the fleet. By 2030, every second MAN truck registered in Europe is to be electric.

Focus on electromobility

MAN has been offering the all-electric MAN Lion's City E city bus in series production in the bus sector since 2020. The focus in the truck sector is also on battery-electric vehicles. MAN sees the electric drive of commercial vehicles as the decisive factor on the road to locally emission-free, more climate-friendly mobility. This currently has clear advantages over other drive concepts in terms of energy efficiency and operating and energy costs.

MAN's electric trucks are in no way inferior to diesel trucks in terms of the variety of applications and possible body concepts. MAN has set itself up for this with a flexible and complete eTruck portfolio from twelve to 50 tonnes. It enables a large number of configurable variants for wheelbases, cabs, engine outputs, battery combinations and industry equipment, so that almost all truck applications can also be realised electrically – from long-distance and distribution transport to municipal or special applications. The most powerful version of the MAN eTruck available has 544 hp (400 kW).

In addition to the CCS standard, the MAN eTGX and MAN eTGS are also available with the MCS megawatt charging standard, which will allow charging capacities of one megawatt and more in the future. This allows the vehicle to be recharged from 10 to 80 per cent battery capacity in around half an hour. This makes the MAN eTruck suitable for long-distance transport.

Following the ‘Exclusive Early Fleet’ limited to 200 units, series production for heavy-duty eTrucks (MAN eTGX and MAN eTGS) will start at the Munich plant in spring 2025. At the same time, MAN will begin series production of high-voltage batteries for electrically powered trucks and buses at the Nuremberg plant. This makes MAN the first commercial vehicle manufacturer in Germany with its own battery series production. Series production of the MAN eTGL will start at the end of 2025. The electrically powered 12-tonne truck is the ‘little brother’ of the heavy-duty models and rounds off the MAN electric truck portfolio with light distribution transport.

Hydrogen-based drives as an alternative

When it comes to zero-emission technologies, MAN is clearly focussing on electromobility. However, MAN sees hydrogen (H2)-based drive systems as a sensible addition to purely battery-electric drives – especially for very long journeys, special applications such as transporting heavy goods or in regions without an adequate charging infrastructure. MAN will be the first European truck manufacturer to launch a small series with a hydrogen combustion engine. The MAN hTGX will be delivered to customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland and selected non-European countries in 2025.

MAN Truck & Bus is also researching hydrogen fuel cells. The so-called ‘Bayern fleet’, for example, is an exciting pre-development project with which MAN will gain important experience in the function of the fuel cell and with H2 fuel cell vehicles in real-life practical use. Following trials on the company's own test tracks, five MAN fuel cell trucks will be tested on the road by customers in Bavaria from 2025.

Other products and services

MAN continues to offer diesel-powered vehicles. The portfolio starts with vans with a gross weight of 3.0 to 5.5 tonnes and ranges from trucks with a gross weight of 7.49 to 44 tonnes to heavy special vehicles with a gross train weight of up to 250 tonnes. As a full-range supplier, MAN thus covers all weight classes. The diesel drive will continue to play an important role throughout the entire transformation towards zero-emission technologies until it is completely replaced. With the newly developed PowerLion drivetrain and the new D30 engine, MAN has once again made diesel technology significantly more efficient, more economical and lower in CO2 emissions.

The company also manufactures city buses, intercity buses and coaches as well as bus chassis under the MAN brand, minibuses based on the MAN Transporter and luxury coaches under the NEOPLAN brand. Industrial engines for mobile and stationary applications off and on the road and water as well as comprehensive mobility services round off the product portfolio.

Autonomous driving as a game changer

Autonomous commercial vehicles are leading to a radical transformation of our customers' business models – automation is a game changer. This is why MAN is intensively driving forward the development of autonomous trucks for use in logistics hubs and hub-to-hub traffic on motorways. In April 2024, MAN was the first commercial vehicle manufacturer to receive a Level 4 test permit based on the law on autonomous driving on German motorways and successfully sent an autonomous truck onto the German motorway.

Around 500 engineers at MAN and the TRATON GROUP are working on the further development of autonomous driving. Over 133 patents have already been registered. The use of autonomous trucks in hub-to-hub traffic is particularly suitable for efficiently handling the constantly growing volume of freight. These lorries drive around the clock, maximise fuel efficiency and are safe to control. There are no driving time breaks, which means that the vehicles can be perfectly integrated into tightly synchronised logistics processes. The efficient use of autonomous trucks can reduce overall operating costs by ten to 15 per cent and alleviate the driver shortage. There is already a shortage of up to 100,000 lorry drivers in Germany alone.

Facts and figures

Current key figures can be found in the TRATON Annual Report .