ABB E-mobility & Scania Solve EV Charging Challenges with Global Deal

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Scania and ABB are working together to provide their customers with reliable, diverse, well fitting EV fast chargers.

Electric vehicles offer smooth and quiet driving. They offer super convenient, efficient home charging and workplace charging. The one area where they can get hung up and cause challenges for drivers is fast charging. Again, for most of us, the need for fast charging is extremely limited, but when we need it, we want it to be convenient, reliable, and efficient. Now, if you’re in the trucking business, fast charging is super important and it’s all about the money. Just remember, time is money, being delayed or detoured is money, and wasting time at a station getting it to work is money.

With all of that in mind, Scania has decided to partner with one of the largest EV fast charger producers in the world, ABB E-mobility, in order to set up and ensure a consistent and hopefully reliable EV charging experience across the globe for its customers. As background, Scania sells trucks, big trucks — and a lot of them. As the company is producing and selling more electric trucks, it needs to make sure its customers are happy. Ensuring EV drivers are happy means ensuring they are happy with their charging situation, and hence the partnership.

“The agreement enables Scania to become a full solution provider for their EV customers, offering a tailored charging solution together with electric vehicles,” ABB E-mobility writes. “Scania will provide both its own network and its customers with ABB E-mobility‘s DC fast charging technology and solutions, including Terra 360, one of the world’s fastest all-in-one electric vehicle chargers.”

A conversation we recently had with Simon Ouellette, the CEO of ChargeHub, hones in on the matter well. “EV adoption is increasing fast, and as a result, customers’ expectations are also increasing fast. The most important aspects of EV drivers’ expectations can be summarized as three main points: ease of charging, speed of charging, and availability of chargers,” he said. “This higher expectation is normal as the market is shifting from early adopters to mass market adoption. For example, not so long ago, 50 kW fast chargers were the fastest EV drivers could expect to get. The technology has evolved quickly and much faster fast chargers are now available. However, too often the charging infrastructure is not consistently delivering the advertised level of power or reliability that is now expected everywhere, all the time. This is what customers switching from gas-powered cars to EV are expecting since they know very well that fueling experience from their ‘previous life.’

“In other words, we are seeing that the gap between customers’ expectations is growing faster than the charging infrastructure industry capacity to overcome the reliability issues. That is one of the most important trends that may continue for a few more years as the industry tackles its reliability issues.”

That’s what this Scania–ABB E-mobility partnership is all about — keeping up with customer expectations, and especially trying to provide a good level of reliability. “The collaboration with ABB E-mobility enables us to build on the momentum we see for electric transport, and it supports our 2030 goal to annually sell 50 percent electric vehicles. We value the global coverage and local presence of ABB E-mobility as well as their wide portfolio of quality EV charging solutions and service support,” says Fredrik Allard, Head of E-mobility, Scania.

When it comes to the technology — the chargers themselves — ABB’s wide range of DC charging solutions are on the table for Scania customers. That includes chargers for home depot charging, chargers for destination charging, and and chargers for superfast public charging. Different scenarios and different needs call for different charging speeds. The power output of these DC chargers range from 24 kW to 600 kW (25 times more). It’s all about matching the right site and need with the right technology.

Also, frankly, it probably won’t be long before ABB E-mobility is offering Scania an even more powerful option at the top of the field. “Earlier this year, ABB E-mobility and Scania announced a successful first test in development of a megawatt charging system (MCS). The testing is a milestone in the development of an efficient, high power charging solution for heavy duty vehicles — a new technology that will enable half the charging time for heavy duty vehicles,” ABB E-mobility writes.

Stay tuned for more. As Simon Ouellette said, 50 kW fast chargers were the fastest thing on the block not long ago!

Featured image courtesy of ABB.