Heavy trucks hit the switch to a net-zero future
A five-minute swap over is one of the selling points for battery packs installed by Janus Electric, which has won the Sustainability Leaders award for the logistics and transport category.
Janus Electric managing director and chief executive Ian Campbell with a truck that has been converted to electric battery technology using ″swappable” battery units. James Brickwood
The Sustainability Leaders list celebrates the Australasian companies that are tackling sustainability challenges – and delivering business value along the way.
Abattery-pack system to power heavy trucks, potentially transforming a sector of the transport industry widely considered one of the most difficult to decarbonise, has been pioneered by Janus Electric.
The innovation has won Janus Electric the
Financial Review Sustainability Leaders award in the logistics and transport category.
The battery packs fit on the side of prime movers in the place of diesel fuel tanks and can be swapped for recharged packs in five minutes or less, says Janus Electric managing director and chief executive Ian Campbell. The swift changeover minimises the truck’s downtime, he adds, and the forklift required to change over the packs is on standby at each charging station.
Janus Electric CEO Ian Campbell: “The real savings come in reduced wear and tear on trucks.” James Brickwood
The battery packs can be charged with renewable energy – roughly the equivalent of eight Teslas on the side of a truck. The power costs about 20c less per kilometre than diesel, but a truck can travel further with a tank of diesel than it can with recharged batteries.
The real savings come in reduced wear and tear on trucks, Campbell says, adding the electric motor, the brakes and the transmission all last longer without the heat and combustion of diesel.
“It’s much gentler on the truck and the componentry,” Campbell says. “I think that is the biggest saving over time: your asset’s going to last longer, your electric motor lasts longer, and over time, as battery chemistry continues improving, your battery cycles will get better.”
Janus Electric listed on **promotion blocked** at the end of May with proof of concept in the shape of 2600 battery swaps and more than 428,000 zero-emission kilometres travelled.
The big freight trucks clock up to 300,000 kilometres a year and Campbell says there are significant barriers to eliminating diesel from widespread Australian use. “There are cognitive barriers to overcome,” he says. “Diesel has been a backbone of our farming and our massive transport sector, and we have to earn the industries’ support to prove electrification is an economically viable option.”
Nine charging stations
For the moment the firm has focused on companies with set trucking routes. “We’ve built infrastructure that suits the customers who have said, ‘well, I’ve got three trucks we can convert, and I’m only doing 200-300 kilometre closed loop circles’,” he says. Cement Australia, for instance, has its own Janus Electric charge-and-change station on-site.
“A client might come along and say, ‘I want this and tailor it to my specifications’,” he says. “And they might be happy to own it. Or they might want to lease.”
Janus Electric can convert existing diesel engine trucks due for a rebuild or replacement, he adds, and provide a new electric motor for a reasonable price compared with the cost of rebuilding an existing diesel motor.
About nine Janus Electric charging stations are up and running across Australia now, Campbell adds, some owned by companies and some on public land and open to all comers. The charging stations themselves are portable – a Janus Electric charging station will fit into a 40-foot shipping container and be trucked to the desired destination.
The public Janus Electric charging station in
Moorebank in Sydney’s south-west is utilising renewable energy from a massive solar rooftop system established with assistance from the NSW government.
For now, a proportion of the Janus Electric batteries are not recharged with renewable energy, he adds, depending on the location of the charging station and the goals of the company that has bought or leased it. “We’re not dictating to them to have 100 per cent renewable yet,” Campbell says. “We’re helping them to do that, and if they have solar capability, we’ll get it all plugged in. Our job is to deliver the infrastructure and we’ll work with the client to get the best result.”
Daily health check
The truck batteries now in use last about 5000 cycles, he adds, which according to current Janus Electric calculations equates to about seven to nine years, depending on truck use. “The new technology goes up to 16,000 cycles, which is more like a 20-year life,” he adds.
Janus Electric had to overcome teething problems in 2023 after a truck battery caught fire on Melbourne’s West Gate bridge, Campbell says, but the systems have since been comprehensively overhauled and include checks and control mechanisms.
“It was something like cell 14 had a degradation issue, and it was showing in the data three weeks before it happened,” he adds. “They’ve written a new algorithm to catch that, and now, instead of a health check every week, it’s a health check every day at 2.30am.”
Looking into the future, the company would ideally like to build charging stations up and down Australia’s east coast, Campbell says, to cater for the many thousands of trucks on the Sydney-Melbourne, Sydney-Brisbane routes.
“We’ve come through proof of concept and commercialisation,” he adds, saying the securities exchange listing is a step-change. “This is like the second coming now to get the growth and utilise the orders and support from the industry.”
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