22/10/2024
"It’s not rocket science. [The government needs to] commit to a charging station at least every fifty miles. That’ll give you about 25 charging stations. Easy-peasy.”
There are 600,000 of the heaviest duty tractor units in the UK - the type of truck used by Stobart et al to haul trailers up and down the country. These trucks cover 100,000 miles a year on average.
Using the data above - 280 mile range / 45 mins to charge, then that equates to 1 charge per truck per day. EV range is never what is quoted and you can't arrive exactly on empty, so assume its an average of 200 miles between charges = 500 charges per year.
500 x 600,000 = 300,000,000 unique charges per year. Assume that charging operates 7 days a week 12 hours per day, then each charger can charge 16 trucks per day. 16 x 365 = 5840 charges per year. To charge the entire UK fleet using the above optimistic assumptions (no time between charges, no faulty chargers etc) there would need to be 51,000 heavy duty truck chargers in the UK.
For context, there are only 8,000 petrol stations in the UK and the sheer size of a site that can accommodate a meaningful number of trucks and trailers means that each site might accommodate 50 trucks and chargers (roughly a 2 acre site). There would need to be over 1,000 charging sites taking up more than 2,000 acres of land.
To charge a Scania truck in 45 mins for 200 miles of range would require a 400Kw charger, therefore a 50 truck site would require 20,000Kw power supply.
Easy-peasy???
Ministers want to stop the sale of diesel trucks by 2040, but issues with batteries and chargers mean the electric HGV transition has a long way to go