ASKO Delivery Fleet Is 100% Battery-Electric In Oslo

ASKO, a division of NorgesGruppen, is Norway’s largest grocery wholesaler. With 13 regional warehouses, 10 Storcash B2B stores, two central warehouses, and one consolidation terminal, ASKO is one of the largest Norwegian transport companies, with over 4000 employees and more than 700 trucks on the road every day.

The company expects to replace all of its diesel-powered trucks by the end of 2026. This week, it announced it has now transitioned all the trucks that service its operations in the capitol city of Oslo to battery-operated models.

“For us, this is an important milestone. We are proud to have reached ASKO’s own goal of cutting all emissions from transport a year and a half ahead of schedule, Trond Morten Pettersen, transport manager at ASKO Oslo told the press.

Even though Norway has one of the cleanest grids in the world, thanks to abundant hydro power, ASKO is also a leader in renewable energy, with over 100,000 square meters (25 acres) of solar panels mounted on the roofs of its buildings and seven wind turbines. Combined, that is enough renewable energy to power almost all of its operations — including charging those electric trucks.

AKSO Partners With Scania

Going 100% electric in Oslo involved more than picking up the phone and placing an order. The truck manufacturer is Scania, part of Traton, which in turn is part of Volkswagen Group. The first two electric trucks from Scania did not have enough range to complete some of the routes, but Scania has addressed that issue with its latest products.

Earlier this year, it delivered new trucks to ASKO with batteries that are twice the size of those used previously. Not only that, the new trucks can charge three times faster, meaning they can spend less time plugged in and more time delivering cargo. We at CleanTechnica are always saying the EV revolution is not yet complete and that new technologies are making electric vehicles better almost on a daily basis. The Scania experience proves our point.

The delivery trucks used by ASKO Oslo are driven about 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) annually. Switching to battery-operated trucks has reduced carbon emissions from its fleet that services the capitol city by 1,700 tons annually — an amazing 95%! Not only that, the company says the energy consumption for the electric trucks is about half that of the diesel-powered trucks they replaced. “Our experience with electric trucks is that combining climate considerations with efficient logistics is entirely possible,” said Pettersen.

Getting from the warehouse to the loading dock of their customers is only part of the job. Most of the products carried by those box trucks — and a few trailers — need to be refrigerated or kept frozen along the way. For that task, Scania relies on refrigeration units from ThermoKing. Normally those refrigeration units are powered by diesel engines, so converting to electrical power had its own set of challenges.

“It turned out to be tricky to supply the electric motor and the refrigerator unit with power from the vehicle battery at the same time,” John Lauvstad, the director of communications, sustainability, and branding for Scania Norway said in a blog post. The reason is that while the motor is powered by 650 volt direct current, the cooling unit requires 400 volt alternating current. To adapt the vehicles to this customer requirement, the experts at Scania used a special inverter to transform DC voltage into AC voltage.

Constant Improvements In Electric Trucks

See what we are saying about constant improvements? Detractors like to whine about how electric vehicles are not as good as conventional vehicles in every respect and, therefore, nobody should use them. But the allure of zero emissions and lower operating costs means others just dig in to find the solutions to those areas where improvements are needed. It’s how business have been done for centuries, not that the EV haters understand that.

New technologies often need operators to adapt to the new way of doing things. “In the beginning, our drivers would return to the distribution center with a larger safety buffer than today,” said Marius Råstad, the corporate logistics manager for ASKO. “They’re much bolder now. In conjunction with the dispatchers’ smart scheduling, a single battery charge of 165 kilowatt hours is generally sufficient to power the truck for an entire shift.“

Usually, the vehicles are then fully recharged overnight. But now, thanks to a 50 kilowatt fast-charging station at the depot, they can also be recharged between route departures or during a driver’s lunch break.

ASKO intends to increase not only the number of climate friendly commercial vehicles it owns but also their utilization rate. They are already working 16 hours a day, six days a week. “At the moment, we’re still using the electric trucks in a two shift system,” says Råstad, “but we’d like to use them around the clock in the future, where this fits in with our general schedule and transportation volume.”

Perfect For Low Noise Zones

In many urban areas, restrictions on noise limit the hours when deliveries can be made. Electric trucks, with their zero emissions motors, are ideally suited for use in busy city centers and residential areas where noise restrictions apply. In order to be able to use these advantages with more and more battery-powered trucks, ASKO says it will continue to expand the charging infrastructure at its distribution centers together with external partners.

“Scania has delivered ever more sustainable vehicles with climate-friendly drive systems over the past 20 years, from biodiesel and biogas engines to hybrid drive systems,” said Råstad. “But the latest generation of battery powered drive systems is now opening up a whole new world of possibilities for zero-emission transportation. Next generation batteries, improved range, and available charging infrastructure will enable us to use the electric trucks on even longer distribution routes.”

It’s no surprise that acceptance of electric trucks is high in Norway, where sales of BEV and PHEV cars is now approaching 100% each month. While other nations have been fiddling and diddling about maybe going “green” at some distant point in the future, Norway has made carefully laid plans to build a sustainable economy and then followed through on the implementation of those plans.

Electric Truck Leadership

Leadership is contagious. The trucks Scania has engineered for ASKO will now find other customers and customers of those customers will be encouraged to consider them as well. That’s how new technologies become mainstream technologies, despite the fossil fuel nabobs nattering from the sidelines.

Are there challenges yet to be met? Of course there are, but they are being addressed. The next generation of Norwegians will be astonished to learn the country once relied on diesel-powered devices with thousands of moving parts to keep its grocery store shelves stocked with knekkebrød and Totenflak crisps.

Special thanks to Åre Hansen, chief correspondent at the CleanTechnica Norway news bureau.