The heavy duty electric truck that can run 24 hours a day

Danish company Danfoss has bought three Volvo heavy duty electric trucks and intends to operate one of them 24 hours a day, five days a week, helping put to bed the idea that electric trucks can’t be economical because of the time they have to stop and charge.

The 24-hour truck will use customised super chargers to charge the battery quickly while the truck is being offloaded and onloaded. On average this takes about 15 minutes.

The charging infrastructure has been set up from the Danish company God Energi.

Because the truck is going between relatively short distances, and is able charge will loading, it will not need to take extra time to charge. On the weekends when it’s not in use the truck will do longer overnight charges to get it back up to full.

“This is a true testament that collaboration across the sectors is necessary but also opens for fantastic opportunities,” says Volvo’s Zero Emission Business Development Manager, Joakim Nilsson.

“Danfoss is a supplier of critical components in the electrical trucks and it’s fantastic to see they are walking the talk and transforming their whole fleet to electric.”

There are now other examples around the world of 24-hour electric trucks becoming a reality. In Norway, a 24-hour truck operates through three shifts a day, moving rocks 14km between the distribution centre and the destination. Because of the short distance, and loading time, this truck can be quickly topped up on a relatively small 40 kW charger.

There are also other solutions proposed to the long charging times of electric trucks, particularly for trucks that need to go longer distances.

Australia’s Janus Electric swap the battery in the trucks while the driver has their allocated 15-minute breaks. This allows the company to slowly charge the batteries with renewable power, and the driver to continue after the quick swap.

The purchase of the three trucks  is part of a larger deal between the companies, with nine trucks set to be operational by 2024, and the company committed to transitioning the entire company car fleet to electric vehicles by 2030.

“By transitioning our own fleet of transport vehicles to be fully electric, we want to demonstrate to our customers and other companies around the world that it’s challenging, but not impossible, to switch to electric transport vehicles and essential if you want to decarbonise your business,” said the company y head of sustainability and global services Torben Christensen.