The electrification of heavy transport is now progressing faster than ever. At the same time, it raises questions among transport companies and logistics operators: when does electrification become truly relevant, where are the biggest bottlenecks, and how should charging be implemented in practice?
For companies, electrification is increasingly a strategic choice and a key part of the transition toward greener logistics: reducing emissions without compromising efficiency or profitability.
In this blog post, we bring together the key insights from our webinar, where we examined the electrification of heavy transport specifically from the perspective of companies’ day-to-day operations and decision-making.
Electric heavy-duty vehicles are no longer a distant concept. Just a few years ago, electric fleets were clearly more expensive in terms of total costs than diesel-powered vehicles, but this is changing rapidly.
Vehicle production volumes are increasing, model ranges are expanding, and EU-level regulation is steering the market toward electrification. At the same time, public charging infrastructure is being built at an accelerating pace. All of this supports the shift toward lower-emission heavy transport.
In Finland, forecasts for electricity consumption growth also indicate that the transition will be quick. Fingrid, Finland’s transmission system operator, estimates that electricity consumption in transport will double by 2030 and grow approximately 3.5-fold by 2035. In the Nordic countries, especially Sweden, the number of electric trucks and buses is already growing rapidly. In Sweden, nearly a thousand new electric trucks and roughly the same number of electric buses are registered each year.The same development is expected in Finland and, driven by EU-wide regulation, across the EU as well.
For companies, this means one thing: they need to be prepared for electrification to maintain competitiveness.
The biggest challenge in electrifying heavy transport is often assumed to be vehicle availability. In reality, an even greater bottleneck lies in the electricity grid.
Charging a single electric truck can require more than 400 kW of power. In the future, megawatt charging (MCS) will push the power demand of a single vehicle close to one megawatt. When several vehicles are charged simultaneously at a terminal, consumption peaks grow rapidly, and the existing grid connection may no longer be sufficient.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that large grid connections are no longer guaranteed. Delivery times can be long, costs high, and in some cases the required capacity is simply not available.
Even when the grid connection is sufficient, or has been upgraded, new challenges quickly arise. Demand charges can be expensive, and charging is often time-critical: vehicles must be charged when they return from their routes, regardless of electricity prices.
Traditional solutions such as load management and staggered charging help to a point. However, as fleet sizes grow, they are often no longer enough on their own.
Route optimization for electric heavy-duty vehicles plays an important role in making operations profitable and can help deal with limits related to the grid.
Efficient route planning can reduce simultaneous peak charging needs by controlling charging windows, driving distances, and battery capacity. Basically this means making sure that not all vehicles are charging simultaneously. However, it can’t eliminate structural grid constraints and as fleet sizes increase, efficient charging both on the road and at depots and terminals becomes even more important.
The EU’s AFIR regulation (Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation) obliges member states to build public charging infrastructure for heavy transport. This is a necessary condition for large-scale electrification in the long term.
However, public charging does not fully solve the everyday challenges faced by logistics companies. Public charging is often more expensive, and route profitability typically requires efficient charging at depots and terminals as well.
Enabling depot charging, and managing its cost structure, ultimately remains the responsibility of the companies themselves.
Energy storage offers an alternative: part of the required charging power can be supplied by a battery energy storage system without upgrading the grid connection.
With energy storage, charging can be supported during peak power demand. At other times, the battery charges when electricity prices are low and can also participate in ancillary service markets to support grid balancing.
This fundamentally changes the investment equation. It is no longer just about avoiding grid upgrade costs, but about broader system-level optimization.
At Wibax’s terminal in Malmö, electric trucks needed to be charged within 45–60-minute loading and unloading windows. The required charging power was 450 kW, while the available grid connection provided only 138 kW. The delivery time for a grid upgrade was up to two years.
The solution was an energy storage system that enabled the required charging power without a grid upgrade. The battery discharges during charging sessions and recharges in a controlled manner between them.
As a result, the customer was able to deploy electric vehicles immediately, rather than waiting several years.
Read more about the collaboration between Wibax and Cactos.
Electrifying heavy transport requires foresight and a careful evaluation of available options. Companies should comprehensively understand their starting point and assess options, such as using energy storage to support charging.
Electrification is not just about vehicle procurement, and it requires rethinking the entire energy and charging system.
