A billion euro investment to renew services and the vehicle fleet, with a strong green footprint. This is the decision taken by Iveco, a leading manufacturer of trucks and vans. The announcement was made in Barcelona at the ‘Be the change’ event, where Iveco CEO Gerrit Marx announced this extraordinary investment and, at the same time, made official the partnership with historic rock band Metallica for their upcoming European tour. Marx firmly supported the four pillars of the business: productivity, driver experience, sustainability and connectivity.

Among the main innovations summarising these pillars is the unveiling of the new multi-fuel Cursor 13 engine fitted to heavy commercial vehicles. Engines that can also be fuelled with bio liquefied natural gas. Added to this is the strengthening of interconnection for real-time monitoring and fleet management. And if the interconnected vehicles are, for now, about one hundred thousand, the goal is to reach half a million by 2030. The new Green range will be part of the offer of Gate, Iveco Group’s platform for long-term rental of their vehicles.

A vision that fits in well with that of the SMET Group, one of Iveco’s main allies and partners. Indeed, the SMET Group, as one of the major European partners of the Italian heavy and light vehicle manufacturer, was also invited to the event held in Catalonia. The great harmony and convergence on the future between Gerrit Marx (Iveco) and Domenico De Rosa (SMET) was confirmed. The CEO of the Salerno-based logistics group said that ‘seeing the activism, tenacity and determination of our exclusive industrial partner IVECO can only give us confidence and positivity about our future’.

De Rosa stated that although the period we are currently going through – at a global level – is the most complex since the end of World War II, “we have the men, the means and the high-level partners, such as Iveco, that allow us to have the serenity to move forward and plan for the future without hesitation.”

One of the points of greatest agreement to be found in the words of the Iveco and SMET CEOs concerns the European Union’s position on policies affecting vehicle production and circulation. ‘I hope for a change of course in the next Parliament and the next European Commission,’ Marx emphasises. “Let them be more rational, more focused on industry and ready to build a Europe that can compete with the US and China and not a Europe that eats itself.”

In the not too distant past, De Rosa himself had made a constructive criticism of the need to reconcile environmental requirements with production needs. Already in July of this year, De Rosa launched a tirade at the EU institutions: ‘on the energy transition, the European directives are unrealistic’. Months later, Marx, Iveco’s number one, confirms and corroborates the SMET CEO’s words.