Australia's trucking industry shifts gears to electric vehicles amid fuel crisis

With a quiet hum, an electric truck drives away from an Australian automative workshop. At first glance, one could be forgiven for not realising the vehicle has already clocked over a million kilometres as a diesel vehicle.

But one A$150,000 makeover later, the five-year-old diesel engine has been removed and, in its place, a new electric motor and an interchangeable battery system; the start of a new era in Australia’s trucking industry that has struggled to break its addiction to diesel.

Based an hour north of Sydney, Janus Electric was founded four years ago with the goal of electrifying the world’s trucking industry in a sustainable way, by converting pre-existing diesel trucks into electric.

“The economics of running an electric truck were beneficial before the fuel crisis but now it's obviously a million times cheaper to run an electric truck than a diesel truck,” said Ben Hutt, CEO of Janus Electric.

Since the start of the fuel crisis, Hutt reported they’ve had a surge in interest from customers and investors since Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted global energy flows and sent fuel prices soaring.

Australia is one of the biggest consumers of diesel per capita in the world, importing about 80% of its liquid fuels. A lot of that goes to its road freight industry, where diesel-fuelled trucks are used to transport raw materials and goods across long distances in a sparsely populated country.

The industry is on track to become the highest emitting sector in the economy within two years and is considered one of the hardest to decarbonise.

While electric cars have exploded in popularity, the adoption of electric trucks has been hampered by high upfront costs, a lack of charging infrastructure and concerns the technology cannot handle the loads and distances required, said Professor John Rose, from the University of Sydney’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies.

But the recent spike in diesel prices to more than A$3 per litre has shifted the economics in favour of electric trucks.

Janus Electric’s swappable battery system means trucks can be back on the road within minutes, technology they’ve already delivered to the U.S. and Canada and are in active discussions with other potential customers in countries such as the UK, India and South Africa.

Daniel Bleakley, co-CEO of New Energy Transport, said his electric trucking company had also received a wave of recent inquiries since the fuel crisis.

New Energy Transport completed the country’s first end-to-end electric delivery at the end of March between Sydney and Canberra. Bleakley said that the delivery had an 84% reduction in energy costs and was 25 minutes faster than a diesel prime mover on the same route, owing to the fact electric trucks can maintain their speed up hills, unlike their diesel counterparts.

The government last Thursday (April 9) also selected New Energy Transport’s plan to build the country’s largest heavy electric truck depot in Sydney as one of four projects to be supported by a fast-track scheme, citing the need to build sovereign capability amid supply chain disruptions.

“The transition to electrified road freight in Australia is really about sovereign capability, it's about energy security and it's about ensuring that our supply chains are protected against this global volatility that we're seeing," Bleakley said.

“Electric heavy road freight is possible today and not only is it possible, it's capable of operating at a lower cost than diesel freight and it's capable of higher productivity than diesel freight.”

-Cordelia Hsu/Reuters