416K views · Mar 8, 2023 · 15:44 · 0 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2023–2025
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.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN points to it as a real example of battery swapping and diesel-to-electric conversion for heavy trucks.
“there's a small Aussie company that seems to be doing quite well with electric truck conversions”HN comment, 2025
“Janus Trucks is doing it”
Example of a company doing truck battery swapping
> 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.
“Already is a thing for trucks”
Battery swapping already exists for trucks
> 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.
“And truck conversions to make use of your existing fleet”
Truck conversions that reuse existing fleets
> 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
“there's a small Aussie company that seems to be doing quite well with electric truck conversions”
Aussie firm converting trucks with forklift-swapped battery packs
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.
