Recently in Australia, Protrans Solutions conducted a successful trial with a battery-electric refrigerated trailer charged by onboard solar panels on the 1,100 miles Sydney-Brisbane round trip without using diesel to refrigerate the trailer unit. This demonstrates a depot-to-depot cold-chain capability.
But that’s easy, I hear you say, its Australia and its sunny. Well, how about cold and snowy Canada? Transport Canada’s Zero-Emission Trucking Program, recently published a study which monitored over than 200 thousand kms (124,224 miles) of diesel and electric truck data over a year of operations in the Montreal-area. There findings were staggering with nearly $200k of savings per electric truck
Meanwhile in Europe, Trailer Dynamics in Germany has a different idea. Instead of electrifying the tractor, electrify the semi-trailer, so if you use an electric truck, great, this boosts your range, but if you are using a diesel truck, the e-Trailer can reduce fuel costs considerably. The benefits of a self-powered, battery-electric semi-trailer go beyond reducing CO₂ emissions as the technology also promises significant efficiency gains, which is music to the ears of fleet managers
Source: PV Magazine: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: This article is one of many that give a clear indication of where trucking (especially reefers) will go in the future, but the key isn’t really the cost saving, the efficiency improvements or the de-carbonization, but rather insurance. In the trucking world, if you have a 100k cargo of say, pharmaceuticals, the insurance company has historically insisted on a second diesel ICE to power the reefer unit alone. This is why this real life test of refrigerated goods in Australia’s heat, is very telling. PSR
