Doubles for a quartet
Four Swiss firms presented a joint effort in Lucerne recently that shows that fully electric road haulage tractors with a range of 500 km are no longer a pipe dream.
The location for the presentation was apt. On 14 October four partners – Avesco Rent, the Designwerk Group, Friderici Spécial, Galliker Transport – gathered at the Transport Museum in Lucerne to present two new fully electrified tractors. Interested parties attending the event could even go for an immediate test drive.
Wine – an idea – the analysis – implementation
This project began with a good glass of wine and an ambitious idea – as is often the case with such efforts. Clément Friderici of the project cargo logistician Friderici Spécial, and Vincent Albasini, of Avesco Rent, a . machine leasing specialist for the construction and event industries, faced growing demand from customers to reduce their CO2 emissions. So they came up with a joint plan to build a zero-emissions lorry.
They first analysed the situation. Avesco Rent CEO Albasini was astonished by his firm’s own CO2 footprint. “We were surprised to find that transporting construction machinery and the like between building sites and our 20 branches accounted for nigh-on 50% of our emissions.” The potential for optimisation was great. The partnership was then extended to include the Winterthur-based Designwerk Group, and the Swiss road haulier Galliker. The parties agreed that the vehicles would have to meet many needs.
In Lucerne Frank Loacker, the CTO of Designwerk, in which Volvo has held a majority stake since March, expressed his satisfaction with the result. “Thanks to the 900 kWh batteries we increased the radius of action in the logistics field, and enabled users to carry out particularly energy-intensive applications, such as heavy and special transports.” The two units from Futuricum, Designwerk’s e-lorry brand, can cover 500 km with one load of a 900 kWh battery. Today they can be re-charged with green electricity in about 2.5 hours. In future ‘super-chargers’ will reduce this to 45 minutes.
The state authorises – business springs into action
The fully electrified tractors needed to be authorised before they could enter commercial services on the road networks. The Swiss federal roads office Astra gave its exceptional authorisation for the special construction and deployment of the vehicles, which are 1 m longer and weigh 2 t more than usual. This was needed to preserve the truck’s payload with four batteries on board.
The batteries have a life span of more than ten years and 95% of them can be recycled. Despite the high purchase price of up to CHF 600 000 per e-tractor, more than twice the price of a conventional lorry, exemption from the distance-related heavy vehicle fee (HVF) and less costly upkeep, amongst other factors, ease amortisation.
Peter Galliker told attendees that “we now need more competitors who’ll join our effort.” Designwerk’s production capacities of eight Futuricum lorries a month are currently already booked out. The next steps in the project see it upping its production capacities to 14 fully electrified tractor a month in 2022.
