Matthias Speicher
🚛 Read about e-trucks on LinkedIn and it’s all range, megawatt charging, long-haul. But look out the window.
👀 You’ll see that’s only one part of the industry. The other part looks like the photos below. They’re all from the charging yard of a haulier in Sargans, Switzerland.
🇨🇭 One single Swiss operator already running construction transport, distribution, special transport and bulk haulage on electric power. And he isn’t alone. Visit that yard and you’ll find more operators charging there, with even more use cases.
🔄 This is the range that the long-haul story on LinkedIn keeps drowning out. These trucks don’t run 800-kilometre tours. They shuttle, they wait at the dock during loading and unloading, some come back midday, all of them come back to the yard every evening. Charging happens in between, or overnight.
🛣️ Their needs differ from the long-haul tractor-trailers. Some of them run plannable routes too. Others don’t. Those are the wild operators, shifting jobs, no two days alike.
🗳️ Both need charging infrastructure and both have different requirements than corridor traffic. And both don’t just want to go electric, they have to. In June 2023 the Swiss electorate decided: net zero by 2050.
⚡ For heavy haulage that means BEV for the majority of all tours. E-fuels and hydrogen deliver neither the efficiency nor anywhere near the supply needed.
💡 Long-haul needs the right infrastructure. But the other part of the industry can’t be forgotten in the process. Not in the coverage, and not in the solutions.