Right now, we are charging buses in Sweden at 650kW (750VDC), with no barriers seen to 1MW. In other posts on this forum, a battery of 700kWh seems like it might do the trick to go 200-300 miles or so. Then you are only charging at 1C, no problem for most batteries. However, no one will want to stop for an hour or more to wait for the charge. Battery swapping has been mentioned, but can be discarded for the usual reasons. However, what about tractor swapping? For a big trucking company, this would be no problem, since they own the tractors and trailers and hire the drivers.
Roll into a charging station, unhook your trailer, drop off your tractor to be charged, switch to a freshly charged one, rehook to your trailer and keep on rolling with a fresh cup of joe in hand. There are already automatic coupling/decoupling systems to make this painless. Our Opbrid Trukbaar makes the charging operation simple and automatic as well. I bet you could do the switch in 5 minutes. And when driver-less trucks arrive, they can use the same technique.
So, will this work? Any unintended consequences of this approach you can think of?
Roll into a charging station, unhook your trailer, drop off your tractor to be charged, switch to a freshly charged one, rehook to your trailer and keep on rolling with a fresh cup of joe in hand. There are already automatic coupling/decoupling systems to make this painless. Our Opbrid Trukbaar makes the charging operation simple and automatic as well. I bet you could do the switch in 5 minutes. And when driver-less trucks arrive, they can use the same technique.
So, will this work? Any unintended consequences of this approach you can think of?