Nothing but Fast Charging? – Battery Swapping as a Complementary Option of Energy Supply for Electric Trucking

Authors

J. Jöhrens, M. Allekotte, ifeu - Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung, Heidelberg; M. Werner, M. Ruscher, Dresden University of Technology; W.-P. Schill, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Berlin:

Year

2024

Print Info

Production/Publication ÖVK

Summary

Current techno-economic analyses are making it increasingly clear that future heavy goods traffic on the roads in many European countries will be mainly electric and will use batteries as on-board energy storage in many applications. At the same time, enormous challenges are foreseeable with regard to the charging infrastructure required for this, especially regarding public fast charging options. Among other things, it is uncertain whether the required connection capacities to the electricity grid can be created quickly enough.

This is where battery swapping systems (BSS) might come into play. On the one hand, BSS can provide trucks with fully charged batteries within a few minutes. On the other hand, BSS have additional flexibility when charging the batteries and could therefore cope with a lower grid connection power, depending on the application scenario. In our article, we discuss the basic arguments for and against the use of BSS for trucks and compare this option with stationary fast charging from a technical and economic perspective using a case study.

An important result is that BSS are generally comparable to stationary charged e-trucks in terms of total cost of ownership. In practice, however, there could be cost-relevant differences in the utilization of the infrastructure and the electrical load profile, which need to be quantified in further studies.

ISBN

978-3-9504969-3-2

DOI

https://doi.org/10.62626/7mtm-4u5b Copy link