Is anyone working on an electric truck system where the battery is on the trailer? Many businesses are constantly rotating the same dry van trailers between hubs. If you charged the trailers at the doc during loading/unloading, the rigs could run 24/7, only stopping to swap trailers.
Work/worked for a place that was doing this. There's a couple problems:
* More battery weight means less cargo weight
* Trailers are dumb; the standard hookup (in NA) is lights and air. I hear CAN is common in EU though.
* Trailers are cheap and almost disposable.
The trucking industry is very slow moving, and probably 20 years behind passenger cars. So changing any of this stuff, even though none of it sounds particularly major, is at least 15 years out to start. Then you're left with the hundreds of thousands of "legacy" trailers that need to be retired or retrofit. The tractor to trailer ratio out there is like 1:10.
One interesting use case for this though is refrigerated (refer) trailers. They're often diesel-electric so they can plug in to shore power. Add a battery to this and maybe you can dump the diesel motor. Again though, weight is an issue... diesel is an order of magnitude more energy dense than the best batteries we have.
how are the trailers getting charged? there are a lot more trailers than tractors, and having enough charge capacity for trailers seems like a lot. There are a lot of trailers that are just a frame with wheels for a shipping container.
trailers have to sit at docks to get loaded and unloaded. they can charge then. meanwhile the truck can leave instantly. maybe a two part system of flatbed trailer with battery + cargo container sitting on top that?
