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The state of high-speed charging for heavy vehicles
19/2/2025
8 min read
Feature
The market for battery-electric heavy-duty vehicles is growing quickly, but the main growth has come from depot-based vehicles which can be charged at a moderate rate while they are unused: buses, municipal vehicles and local delivery trucks, for instance. In contrast, long-haul trucks and coaches need access to fast charging to make the most of the working day. And this is where the Megawatt Charging System (MCS) comes in. As the name suggests, it could charge vehicles at rates of a megawatt – a thousand kilowatts – or more. Toby Clark writes.
A major factor holding back the adoption of electric vehicles has been ‘range anxiety’ – the worry that you won’t reach your destination, or will at least need a lengthy break for charging. This is important for cars, but absolutely critical for heavy-duty vehicles. For trucks and buses, utilisation is key: every minute off the road is revenue lost. And truck and bus operators with detailed knowledge of routes and schedules know how much they are losing.
One distinct feature of truck and bus driving is mandatory rest breaks: in simple terms, truck drivers in Europe must stop for at least 45 minutes after every 4.5 hours of driving. The timed stop precludes any ‘work’ activity, giving drivers the chance to plug in their vehicle and then go for a rest or a meal. In principle the calculations for charging rates and times are simple: the capacity of the battery (in kilowatt-hours, kWh) divided by the charging rate (in kilowatts, kW) gives the charging time – so a 100 kWh battery charged at 200 kW should take 100/200 or half an hour to charge. But, in practice, charging slows down considerably when the battery is at a low or high state of charge (below 20% or over 80% SoC) – all the more reason to speed up that middle 20–80%.
In theory, a megawatt charger could supply 750 kWh of energy in that 45 minutes – more than the total capacity of a Mercedes-Benz eActros 600’s battery pack, and certainly more energy than a 40-tonne truck would use in the next 4.5 hours.