STILL conneXXt Nr. 02 English

26 OUTLOOK hours to almost every front door in the country – using silent, electric “milk floats”. For intralogistics, all the signs are pointing to now mission: zero emission. The market share of electric forklift trucks has been rising continuously for many years now because electric drives were always more efficient and offered higher performance. At the same time the regulations for emission protection have become more stringent. “The introduction of a new Euro standard will raise the market opportunities for electric trucks in the years ahead, because the development costs in order to comply with valid particle and CO2 emissions are rising and as a result also the sales price of forklift trucks with internal combus- tion engines,” explains Thomas A. Fischer, CSO STILL EMEA. Even on the world’s oceans a paradigm change is in full swing: solar cells and towing kites, which are attached to the bows of ships like giant paragliders, are ways with which shipping lines would like to reduce the fuel consumption of container vessels. It is the case today that virtually all freight ships and above all cruise liners still ply the world’s seas firing environment-polluting bunker oil. At long last some ports have now prohibited this. Hamburg premiered the use of shore- side electricity connections in Europe, basically “plugs for cruise liners”. Shutting down the diesel engines in ports helps not only reduce air pollution, it also reduces the level of sound emissions in the port areas, which are increasingly being used for residential purposes. Once on the open sea it is not only desirable to have water, but also electri- cal power under the keel – thrust reversers actually have a long history: Siemens actually tested its first electric boat in 1886 on the river Spree in Berlin. It was intended to operate as a water taxi delivering Transport Logistics on mission E FINALLY THE GREEN CONSCIENCE OF MANUFACTURERS AND CONSUMERS CAN BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF. Zero-emission logistics solutions on land, at sea and in the air are at an all-time high. The growth in online business and the trend to individual deliveries are boosting this development. Green logistics is one of the top priorities amongst today’s business issues, and that is only right. Because most internal combustion engines work by burning fossil fuels, which are finite. The steady growth in the world’s population and the increasing level of industriali- sation and urbanisation in emerging economies is steadily pushing up demand. And together with the growing business enjoyed by internet platforms and the associated small-scale delivery traffic is pushing up the demand for zero-emission, i. e. e-logistics. It is above all logistics for packages of 30 kg plus which is increasing because more and more consumers are ordering furniture, electrical appliances and other heavy consumer goods online. It is in particular environmentally-aware consumers who are demanding low-emission alternatives for delivery, of which there are now many: electrical delivery vehicles – in particular for the “last mile” – emit neither nitrous oxides nor fine dust particles and hardly any noise. For short haul journeys of up to 50 km, battery-powered trucks are a fu- ture-viable alternative – because route lengths of this type make up to 65 % of all delivery rounds in Germany. In inner-city stop-and-go situa- tions involving many braking and acceleration phases, electric drives are much more viable than conventional drive concepts. A current example is the StreetScooter recently introduced by the Deutsche Post DHL. Although electrically-powered delivery vehicles are nothing new: in Great Britain during the 60s and 70s milk was delivered in the early morning

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