The Schumacher forwarding company provided the “Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components” (PEM) chair at RWTH Aachen University with a semi-trailer free of charge. The loan was recently used in the test drive of an electrically powered truck. Schumacher is thus supporting the “SeLv” research project, in which the researchers at PEM are developing a modular drive train for trucks based on fuel cells with around 17 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Transport.

“We are always looking for ways to work in a climate-friendly way,” says Josef Schumacher, owner of the Würselen shipping company: “In order to achieve complete climate neutrality, we entrepreneurs also have to participate in research, support innovative projects and explore new paths for the future of all of us to secure.”

According to PEM, the traffic and transportation sector is responsible for 20 percent of nationwide greenhouse gas emissions; Around 35 percent of this came from heavy-duty and commercial vehicles. In order to electrify not only passenger cars but also heavy-duty transport, the experts led by Professor Achim Kampker are researching individually configurable truck drive trains in the “SeLv” project. The focus of the development is the industrialization of production processes in order to achieve quantity-based cost advantages in production.