Many Swiss companies want to electrify their freight transport fleets. Finding the right fleet composition and charging strategy is one of the challenges of this. With federal support, INFRAS is developing a decision-making tool for companies.
Electrifying an HGV fleet is a complex task for companies: they need to find the perfect fleet composition and charging strategy for their specific use cases. A research project by INFRAS is examining this challenge and developing a decision-making tool for companies. Its project partners are the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Swiss Post and Designwerk Technologies. The project is being supported by the mobility research programme of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE).
Focussing on companies’ specific requirements
There is a trio of conflicting objectives that poses a challenge when putting together a fleet: range requirements, maximum charging capacity and time limitations when charging battery electric HGVs are sometimes incompatible. The aim is to find an optimum strategy for transforming a fleet that takes companies’ specific requirements into account and tackles these conflicting objectives as effectively as possible.
Covering a wide range of Swiss companies
This project sees INFRAS collaborating with large Swiss logistics companies and energy suppliers. It will involve determining their individual requirements for their vehicle fleets – with the aim of establishing a range of representative use cases. These can then be applied to a wide range of Swiss companies with varying fields of application. The project will develop potential fleet and charging solutions for each of these use cases. This will include calculating overall operating costs, the environmental impact throughout the entire life cycle, fleet reliability and the charging capacity required. The analysis will also include examining the impact on power grids.
Electrifying freight transport more complicated than passenger transport
In recent years, electrification has primarily focused on passenger transport, but now freight transport is undergoing a similar transformation, says INFRAS business unit manager Roberto Bianchetti. “However, given the wide range of vehicle types, areas of application and charging capacity requirements, the challenge is significantly more complex for freight transport”, Bianchetti notes. Close collaborations with industry, logistics companies and energy suppliers will therefore be vital.
The project is expected to be completed at the end of 2025. As well as a report, this will also produce a parametric Excel tool, which will be made available as a decision-making aid to Swiss companies wanting to electrify their freight transport fleet.
Further information and project partners
- Background on the SFOE’s mobility research programme
- Paul Scherrer Institute
- Swiss Post
- Designwerk Technologies
Selected INFRAS projects on the topic of electromobility
- Electromobility scenarios for heavy goods traffic in HBEFA
- The path to a climate-neutral fleet of heavy goods vehicles
- Regional transport without fossil fuels: how to successfully transition the region’s buses to a new drive system
- Electric vehicles: facts and figures on batteries throughout their life cycle
Selected INFRAS projects on the topic of freight transport (in German)
Project team
