Innovation at 0 Kilowatts – Nobody wants to drive Electric Trucks like this…
welcome to a new video with the electric trucker this time a film crew from Bavarian Broadcasting is tagging along i’m having some serious charging issues and I replaced my alarm clock with a more primitive version it’s just after 6:00 i’m topping up the truck and then we’re off the film crew joined me with their huge camera it’s always fun having someone along we’ve already done a few interviews and now we’re heading to an agricultural dealer with the 22 big bags that are in the trailer [Music] i finished unloading and I’m now at an service station where they set up an Eon charging station really cool in theory but it seems like no one ever tested these chargers i keep getting charging errors and it only started charging on the fifth try but it gets worse these are 400 kW chargers that slowly ramp up but as soon as they hit 500 amps charging stops and you can’t restart you have to wait 20 minutes for the station to just work again i’ve never experienced anything this bad i’ve been here for over an hour and could barely charge i really hope they fix this fast because no truck driver can charge like this and I have to find another station now as you know from my channel you’ve got to talk about the problems and as long as they get fixed it’s all good but Eon has a reputation among EV drivers and we don’t forget i’ve been driving electric since 2016 and had to rely on Eon’s triple chargers with my old Zoey and they almost never worked totally unreliable and no one seemed to care back then it was really bad and in the chat groups people just referred to Eon as E off that said anyone can improve i think it’s great that they want to join the truck charging game but it has to work this was my first time charging with Eon in years and it was a total flop now let’s talk about the issues that I have with this charger there are lots of reasons why charging power can be reduced or limited but if you don’t tell users what’s going on they’re completely in the dark my truck is charging at 300 kW but the charging curve is more like a charging roller coaster what is a truck driver supposed to do move to another charger maybe the next one is just the same if truckers have bad experiences here they will avoid this charging park in the future so we need proper communication use some stickers or signs to let people know if charging is limited or if it takes a few minutes for full power to kick in i’m at a big industrial company now and this is how pickups should work you drive up no matter the time even in the middle of the night check in with your transport number name license plate and phone number and then you get clear instructions on where to park and later you get a text telling you where to go for loading no need for anyone to sit in an office it’s fully automatable and way more convenient for everyone involved i’m getting loaded at the ramp now and the guy doing the loading was super friendly he explained how everything works how long it’ll take how many pallets are being loaded and even apologized for the few hours I had to wait he even offered me a shower really great communication they’ve also got a safety feature here with the wheel chalk it has a sensor that shows whether it’s still in place in front of the tire or not that way the forklift driver always knows if it’s safe to load and gets warned if the truck could start to move i’m loaded with heat pumps and stopped to charge at my usual charger number 10 it always works flawlessly full power every time and I ran into a few friends I traveled to Morocco with back then I drove in my Tesla Model Y they were in their Model S and it was quite a challenge using only AC charging in Morocco but they even brought their caravan with them they’ve traveled all over the world and share their adventures on Instagram too the evening charging session went smoothly and the gigaliner from a previous video at a mile charging park is charging here too really cool to see i’m taking the dog for a walk and then that’s a wrap for the day i’m almost at the delivery spot and the BMW driver in front of me is going totally nuts past me like a maniac he must be in a real rush to get to work you have to admire the motivation now I’m at the unloading point it looks pretty relaxed but there’s actually zero space to someone who doesn’t drive trucks it probably seems normal but there’s no room to maneuver it was a real challenge but at least unloading is going fast now at the ramp this time I’m a totally normal trucker taking a regular break without charging i think every electric vehicle with a battery should be connected to the grid whenever it’s parked especially with birectional charging which is super important for the energy transition and the power grid but with trucks and mandatory rest times it’s not that easy and that’s also the biggest shift for dispatchers usually they just send drivers to where they need to go and that’s it but with an electric truck you need more info to plan your charging breaks with more information about your next route you can avoid pricey public charging and instead charge at the depot good morning it’s just before 6:00 and I’m about to head into the Netherlands to pick up CO2 cylinders from a ship another hazardous materials transport my colleagues are slowly arriving and the first electric cars are showing up to charge i’m in Harlingan at the shipyard that built the electric catamaran from a previous video and there’s barely any space to get in so it’s super important as a trucker not to just trust people when they say there’s enough room to turn you have to check it out on foot first else you get stuck with no way out loading was pretty tough usually gas cylinders have a screw cap on top so you can lift them easily with a forklift but not these ones we had to roll everything by hand which was pretty exhausting i’m only 3 km from my destination but there’s a construction site where hazardous materials aren’t allowed it wasn’t marked anywhere online or in the apps so now I have to take a 30 km detour i don’t have a lot of battery charge left so I hope that I can still make it back i got to the customer and did a proper workout unloading everything and it’s 25° C the summer has definitely arrived but now I have a problem i didn’t expect the detour and I also took a wrong turn so I’m down to 9% battery i won’t make it back without a charging stop you’re probably thinking that this is the worst case scenario but just 1 km from the unloading location is a charging park and right next to it an IKEA where I grabbed three plant-based hot dogs for €150 each and in the few minutes that I was getting food the truck charged enough to drive home i was short on just 4% battery charge but now I’m back at the depot so not a big deal but having a bit of buffer for these situations is essential but it shows that even if a few things go wrong the regular car charging infrastructure can get you out of tricky situations the risk of actually getting stranded is super low you’d really have to try hard to make that happen i’ve started prepping for next week because we’ve got a special job coming up for that I’ll drive to Bavaria tomorrow with an empty trailer that happens sometimes because there is not enough time to pick up new cargo and next week we’re heading to Sweden with three electric trucks in a convoy and we’re not doing staggered departures we’re sticking together to simulate a real stress test for the charging infrastructure and for ourselves but more importantly we want to show that it’s possible with multiple E trucks not just solo like I’ve done up to now i’ll sleep here tonight go for a quick jog and then head home tomorrow super relaxed because I have no schedule to chase these are perfect conditions for truck driving great weather no wind around 20° that means super low energy consumption even with this low trailer i’m currently at about 1.2 2 kwatt hours per km which gives me a range of around 450 km i’ll drive as far as I can today the coolest thing here at Main Franken Park the rooster his name is Rudolph or Rudy and he struts between the trucks crowing like crazy basically a built-in wakeup call he’s got two companions Beatatrice and Berta i didn’t set an alarm today and Rudy woke me up worked like a charm i love the idea of having animals i always thought you’d need a farm for farm animals but clearly not my dream is to have a cow one day maybe when I’m retired I’ll be the first parking lot manager with a cow now I’m heading to Munich leave the truck there and take the train for the last 150 km i’m starting next week from Munich anyway so driving the truck empty for 300 km doesn’t really make sense economically and environmentally i’m back home and excited for next week if you are too you can watch next week’s video earlier with a YouTube membership which also helps the channel a lot thanks for watching have a great day and see you next time ciao
This video is rewritten, re-edited, and dubbed from German into English.
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VJ0xp3EIYk
Video by BR24 that was recorded in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZIWBD_hC_M
Follow my journey here on YouTube or on Instagram
https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker
Link to the Truck Charging Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?entry=yt&ll=51.35447656874323%2C10.919616499999998&z=5&mid=1zReb703wQsGcRTTeI4jvXRuemYvVM3o
