EcoSwift Brings Big Rig Battery Swapping To Singapore

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When you think of densely populated cities, Singapore should be near the top of the list. Like virtually every city its size, it relies on the diesel engine to bring needed goods and services to its residents. The government would love to see some of those diesel trucks taken off the road so Singaporeans would not breathe quite as much nitrogen oxide pollution and fine particulate matter, but heavy-duty electric trucks require heavy-duty charging equipment. Those big charging parks take up a lot of space — something that is at a premium in Singapore — and place an enormous strain on the local utility grid.

EcoSwift began in 2022 with a simple idea — create a state of the art battery swapping station in Singapore that can serve the needs of 60 trucks a day in an area much less the size of a traditional heavy-duty charging hub. Then configure it in such a way that the demand on the local grid is much less than such a charging hub would normally require. Today, the first of its battery swap stations is open for business and working well.

According to Bloomberg Hyperdrive, the EcoSwift battery swapping station for big rigs can replace batteries in under five minutes. The 1,550 square foot facility takes up just one sixteenth of the space needed to charge 30 heavy trucks through the traditional plug-in method. It also uses much less electricity — just 1,600 amps compared with the 6,000 amps required to fast charge 30 heavy-duty trucks. The battery swapping process is completely automated and can handle 60 trucks a day. It also costs about a third as much to build as a conventional charging hub with 48 charging stations — $1 million as opposed to $3 million.

Naturally, only trucks configured with swappable batteries can take advantage of the EcoSwift technology. At the present time, only one heavy-duty truck model from China’s Sany Group can be serviced at the EcoSwift facility, but the success of the project should lead other manufacturers to build compatible models.

Battery swapping is a well known technology in China, with NIO and CATL having already performed over 5 million battery swaps. It also has several potential advantages for commercial customers. It means they no longer need to worry about battery health or degradation — one of the primary concerns of electric vehicle owners. It also means the batteries in use are always using the latest technology at no cost to the owner for the upgrade.

The EcoSwift model may be in its infancy, but it does offer a potential template for cities around the world that are struggling to roll out charging infrastructure at a pace that keeps up with demand. While range anxiety is a concern for drivers traveling vast distances in places like the US and Australia, crowded cities like London and Paris present their own set of challenges. Space is hard to come by and expensive to secure, and the aging electricity grid risks being overloaded if a lot of EVs are charged when power use is already high, increasing the threat of fires.

“Europe faces space and grid constraints — finding sites where you can bring enough power in a short period of time,” said Madeleine Brolly, an analyst at BloombergNEF. In the UK, for example, “you have to dig up a road to bring power to your site, but the roads are too busy to close,” she said.

That contrasts with China, a pioneer of battery-swap technology, where the International Energy Agency estimates that as many as half of electric heavy-duty trucks sold in 2023 were enabled with battery-swapping technology.

But even industry leader Nio Inc. has grappled with the complexities of expanding beyond its home market. The company’s roughly 60 charging stations dotted across Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden tend to be off highways to target drivers traveling longer routes, rather than commuters in densely populated cities, according to Brolly.

Leading battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) is also looking to boost its presence in the battery-swapping sector. Last year, it opened the world’s first in-port battery swapping station for heavy-duty trucks, serving multiple models. Earlier this year, CATL signed a partnership with Sinopec to expand a battery swapping network, and is working with NIO to build out a network for passenger cars.

EcoSwift plans to add more battery swapping stations in industrial areas and is in talks with several bus builders about incorporating the technology into their systems. Heavy-duty vehicles, which include big rigs and buses, are a major contributor to emissions from the road transport sector. Singapore’s 52,000 heavy vehicles contribute close to a third of its land transport emissions, according to government estimates. In the European Union, it’s more than a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions from the road transport sector. In the US, medium- and heavy-duty trucks with infernal combustion engines account for 23 percent of the industry’s emissions.

The diesel engine has been a workhorse for humans for nearly a century. Now is the time for new technologies that provide the same heavy-duty capability at less cost with lower emissions. EcoSwift could be a big part of making that happen.