Can Megawatt Charging Systems Scale This Quickly for Big Trucks?

• Truck maker MAN demonstrates megawatt charging system (MCS) developed as part of its NEFTON project, charging an electric truck at over 1000 kW.

• The MCS would allow heavy-duty trucks with large battery packs to be charged in under an hour, provided a large-enough station network exists to support EV trucking.

• The truck maker says about 50,000 high-performance and megawatt charging stations will be required by 2030 to enable a transition to electric trucks, according to one industry estimate.

Electric vehicles with 800-volt architectures that can take advantage of faster charging speeds are difficult enough to find at the moment, as are charging stations that can reliably supply all that juice.

But even faster charging is likely on the way, and it's aimed mostly at one particular type of EV.

Earlier this month a charging infrastructure research project in Germany charged one of MAN's eTrucks at 1025 kW, demonstrating a megawatt charging system (MCS) aimed at heavy-duty trucks now arriving on the market in Europe and elsewhere. The 40-tonne MAN eTruck thus received enough energy in 30 minutes to give it a range of 248 miles.

But 1000 kW is just the beginning, according to the truck maker. The NEFTON project responsible for this MCS prototype demonstration envisions truck charging at up to 3000 kilowatts, or 3 megawatts.

Earlier this spring MAN demonstrated yet another megawatt charging station, developed with ABB E-mobility, that was able to charge an electric truck at 700 kW.

The bad news is that quite a few stations of this type will be needed in order to transition long-distance trucks to electric power.

"According to industry estimates, around 50,000 high-performance and megawatt charging stations will be needed by 2030 in order to sustainably drive forward the mobility transition for trucks in Europe," the truck maker notes.

Truck manufacturers in Europe are now teaming up in several consortiums to build these charging stations, with MAN expecting half of all of its new trucks being registered as battery-electric by 2030.

This is a very compressed timeframe, to say the least, and it also assumes quite a bit of EV optimism on the part of cargo fleets, as well as tremendous expenditures on charging infrastructure and plenty of cooperation from utility companies.

With about 80% of all goods in Germany traveling by road, the incentive to decarbonize heavy-duty trucks is seen as one of the priorities for the next few years in implementing the Paris Climate Agreement.

But the costs of such rapid progress in charging infrastructure, as well as truck manufacturing, still have to be carried by someone, with MCS stations presenting their own set of technical requirements to be met.

Relatively little has been said regarding how much freight rates will have to grow in the next few years to fund a transition both to battery-electric trucks and megawatt-level charging stations, even it it were to be mandated by the European Union.

The NEFTON project itself was funded by MAN Truck and Bus, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, but the costs of achieving MCS on a prototype level such as this are perhaps trivial compared to how many stations MAN believes are needed.

"With NEFTON, we have succeeded in developing technologies to charge e-trucks within a very short time and with a power output of over 1000 kW. Our research focused on practicality, costs, and grid connection power," says Frederik Zohm, Executive Board Member for Research and Development at MAN Truck & Bus.

It remains to be seen just how quickly western Europe can reorient its road infrastructure to support heavy-duty electric trucks—whether with megawatt charging or not. But it clearly will take significant amounts of money to make this work even on a limited scale, such as between large port cities and manufacturing centers.

Will battery-electric semi trucks become commonplace in the second half of the decade, or will they take much longer to edge out diesel trucks? Let us know in the comments below.