This GIANT Electric Semi Can Swap Out Its Batteries!
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it as a real example of battery swapping and diesel-to-electric conversion for heavy trucks.
What it is
Fully Charged visits Janus Trucks in New South Wales, Australia, which converts diesel trucks to electric with swappable battery packs. The truck carries 620 kWh of batteries and a 540 kW drive.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2023 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Cites clouddrover · 2023-05 · on “Heavy electric trucks cheaper than diesel goods trucks”
> Battery swapping is one of those ideas that sounds good but has enough disadvantages that it's rarely worth it Nio is doing it: [LINK] Gogoro is doing it: [LINK] Janus Trucks is doing it: [this video] Paying attention to what's going on in the real world is more useful than internet theorizing.
Cites clouddrover · 2023-11 · on “The Tesla Semi from an Insider's View After One Year: "Hot Mess"”
> Also, battery swapping will become a thing. Already is a thing for trucks: [this video] Janus Trucks converts your existing trucks to battery electric and provides swap stations.
Cites peutetre · 2024-06 · on “Tesla shareholders approved $56B package for Musk while Tesla laid of 10k people”
> The car majors are LOSING over $100,000 PER ELECTRIC CAR OR TRUCK. Tesla is MAKING about $7000 per car. How do you think the race is going? They're car companies. They sell cars. They're making more per car than Tesla is: [LINK] [LINK] > Tesla Semi Other manufacturers sell more electric trucks (and buses) than Tesla. They're not new: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] And truck conversions to make use of your existing fleet: [this video]
Cites tim333 · 2025-02 · on “Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy”
In contrast to the failed Nikola approach there's a small Aussie company that seems to be doing quite well with electric truck conversions. Rather than build in batteries like in cars they swap packs using a forklift - vid [this video] Seems quite a good idea to me - it's a different market to cars where no one wants to muck around with forklifts, whereas with trucks they use forklifts to load stuff anyway and people don't especially want to have to plug it in for hours to recharge. Also you can charge the batteries while not installed using things like solar, whereas with built in batteries like on the Tesla semi you need a lot of grid power to supercharge.