Range continues to be one of the biggest and most legitimate concerns regarding battery-electric-powered long-haul commercial trucks.
But there's another major issue keeping many electric trucking fleets up at night: charging downtime. Every minute not on the road matters.
Enter ABB E-mobility.
At this year's ACT Expo, Clean Trucking had the opportunity to interview Christopher Thompson, head of product and portfolio marketing, about the company's driver-focused MCS 1200, a 1.2 megawatt charging system.
The system enables high-speed charging during mandatory 30-minute driver breaks. Equally important, the charger's user interface is customizable for fleet operators and allows for app-based and RFID-based access control that provides fleets options for how drivers authenticate and pay.
Christopher Thompson
This is our 1.2MW mix 1200 charger, basically to keep trucks on the road that have mix outlets for transportation and logistics companies.
Jay Traugott
Tell us, exactly what are we looking at here? Because this is a critical piece of charging infrastructure. Before we go any further, if you're enjoying clean trucking news and videos, you can get more delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter using the link in the description below.
Christopher Thompson
So what I'd like to show you. We have a dual cabinet here because it's all about safety when you're dealing with, 1.2MW. So what we have over here is everything to chill the cable, because you have a lot of power running through this cable. Over here you have all the fuses and the power electronics. What we're showcasing today, this is actually the charged post that dispenses the energy.
Christopher Thompson
What's behind there is three 400 kilowatt cabinets that make up the 1.2MW power that's delivered to the trucks. So what's important here that you have a IK ten. Why is that important? You have big trucks coming that might open the door. And so you need safety and flexibility. And you also give the, the light up here. So you get visibility to the truck because it's built for how high the cab is.
Jay Traugott
Very. You very much done your homework? The measurements?
Christopher Thompson
Yeah. So I'd like to focus on a couple of things that we do really well. First is the screen.
Jay Traugott
So obviously you have something a bit of a surprise for us. My name is already into the system here.
Christopher Thompson
So this is what we call our experience domain. So it's actually across our entire portfolio. This is basically allowing brands to express themselves. When we put these megawatt charging cabinets and connectors into the market today. So you're able to configure things like the logo, a message and the person's name.
Jay Traugott
There's a mobile app. It says the get app at the bottom corner there.
Christopher Thompson
Exactly. If you want to drive people as a business to use an app, or if you're a trucking company that has RFID cards, you can change that to use your RFID card. So it's really flexible in terms of payment and authentication.
Jay Traugott
Okay. So let's take a look at it a little more in depth.
Christopher Thompson
Yeah let's do that. So for example what we do is when you come in to charge you have this wonderful megawatt charging connector. And as you pull this out you have the actual torque that aligns with the inlet of the mix outlet on the truck. So why don't you take a hold of that, see what that is?
Jay Traugott
Yeah. It's not too heavy.
Christopher Thompson
No it's not. And actually, if you come over here and you put this back, we see all what you notice is that this is not straight up. It's actually positioned where you take it out in. The torque is perfectly positioned to the inlet. So you bring that back and you can do that even one handed.
Jay Traugott
It's very easy on the wrist.
Christopher Thompson
Yes, exactly.
Jay Traugott
That's a very smart design feature.
Christopher Thompson
Yes. So let's just walk through here. Again, it's very easy. It says to connect to your vehicle. So we were able to do that. You confirm the range. So you can imagine if you have a membership like we talked about with the RFID card different rates. Now if I move forward, as we talked about, do you want to push someone to an app payment RFID?
Christopher Thompson
What we've done is we've configured this to use your app, but you can actually make that, more or less options of having 1 to 3 and drive people to what you want to use. So I use my app. Then you start charging. What we offer is also the ability to follow your charge. So if you have a mobile phone, you take it out and you scan the QR code.
Christopher Thompson
So what you see here is that you're able to take this away with you and know the exact status of your you're charging when you're away getting, coffee or a lunch.
Jay Traugott
And I like it. It's very nice that you can have the estimated total price as well, or you're even done charging.
Christopher Thompson
Yes. So let's move forward. You have again, the color accent. So I return the connector and your brand. So we took it from your website. So that matches, everything from the website along with the app icon there for your website. So charging is done. We return the connector. Thank you for charging with us. You can personalize this message.
Christopher Thompson
You have all the details here. So then we we finish here. Have a safe trip. You have your logo and you're able to offer, outro screen as well. So these are things that we configured for our customers. So if you have, something that you want to put there, you're able to do that right now.
Jay Traugott
What's the charging time is going to be like? It's obviously going to vary from vehicle to vehicle as the type of battery that running.
Christopher Thompson
When you have 1.2MW of power delivering to a truck. This is actually configured for the break time that's mandated by the government. So in Europe, that's a 45 minute break time in the US is 30 minutes. So that you're able to do like half you're out, have your lunch break, fill up your truck and then complete your route.
Christopher Thompson
So this is, what this is made for today.
Jay Traugott
Very cool. When are we going to see them out there on the road?
Christopher Thompson
So a for mix system. We should see, relatively shortly. We are involved in several semipublic, projects to test the interoperability with trucking companies.
Jay Traugott
Thank you very much. And if anyone has any additional questions, please leave them for me in the comments and I'll be sure to get to them. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel and I'll see you all next time.
