Transport is shaping up as one of Australia’s biggest carbon challenges, and one of the hardest to solve.<\/p>\n
Already the nation’s third-largest source of greenhouse emissions, it is on track to become the highest-emitting sector by 2030 as electricity generation continues to clean up.<\/p>\n
Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water 2023 projections show transport emissions will continue to rise slightly to 2030 while other sectors are expected to decline.<\/p>\n
Within that, heavy road freight looms large.<\/p>\n
“Australia is an extremely road freight-dependent country,” said Daniel Bleakley, co-chief executive and co-founder of New Energy Transport.<\/p>\n
“We’re the second-most road-freight-dependent country in the world after the United States, and we also have the heaviest trucks in the world.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Daniel Bleakley and Fredrik Pehrsson are co-founders of New Energy Transport. (Supplied: New Energy Transport)<\/p>\n
“If we can decarbonise heavy freight, we can make a huge impact on reducing transport emissions overall.”<\/p>\n
New Energy Transport plans to establish a pilot fleet of heavy electric trucks in Wilton, south-west of Sydney, by the middle of 2026.<\/p>\n
The company says it will be Australia’s largest electric trucking depot.<\/p>\n
The site will initially house up to 50 heavy electric prime movers, with plans to grow the fleet to 200 vehicles by 2031.<\/p>\n
Wilton hub<\/p>\n
The depot will be set up alongside Australia’s busiest freight route \u2014 the Hume Highway.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A driver inspects a truck before the trial. (Supplied: New Energy Transport)<\/p>\n
“It’s a fantastic location because we’ve got good access to the Hume Highway and down to the Illawarra,” Mr Bleakley said.<\/p>\n
“There are around 5,000 trucks going up and down Picton Road to the Illawarra every day, and about 3,800 heavy trucks on the Hume Highway.<\/p>\n
“We’re positioning ourselves right in the middle of this extremely dense freight corridor.”<\/p>\n
The depot will be powered by a mix of grid electricity and on-site solar, about 3 to 5 megawatts, with high-powered chargers capable of fully recharging the 600 to 700 kilowatt-hour truck batteries in under an hour.<\/p>\n
“If we can run these electric trucks on low-cost renewable energy, we can reduce both emissions and the cost of heavy road freight,” Mr Bleakley said.<\/p>\n
Electric trucks ‘light years ahead’<\/p>\n
The concept was put to the test recently in what New Energy Transport believed was the longest single-charge electric truck delivery ever completed in Australia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wilton has been chosen as the site for Australia’s largest heavy electric trucking depot. (Supplied: New Energy Transport)<\/p>\n
Partnering with Multiquip, a major poultry transport and logistics company based in Liverpool, the team ran a 36-tonne electric prime mover from Picton to Beresfield in the Hunter and back again, about 480 kilometres on a single charge.<\/p>\n
Multiquip national compliance manager David Muir, whose company supplied the chicken, said the test was a revelation.<\/p>\n
“I was sceptical at the start. I still love proper diesel trucks,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But this thing was light-years ahead.<\/p>\n
“It was significantly faster uphill, kept up with traffic easily, and the torque delivery was immediate. Each direction we saved about 20 minutes compared to our diesel trucks.”<\/p>\n
Multiquip, which operates a fleet of about 500 trucks nationwide, found the electric truck not only matched diesel for range and cost, but offered surprising advantages.<\/p>\n
“It was extremely quiet, [and] the driver said it was just so easy to drive,” Mr Muir said.<\/p>\n
“Less noise, less vibration, no exhaust fumes, it’s a far better environment for drivers.<\/p>\n
“They were able to arrive at their destination still feeling pretty fresh.”<\/p>\n
He said the trial showed that for hub-to-hub freight within a few hundred kilometres, electric trucks could already compete.<\/p>\n
“The electricity it used compared to diesel was a fraction,” Mr Muir said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The company says the truck completed a 480-kilometre return trip between Picton and Beresfield on a single charge. (Supplied: New Energy Transport\u00a0)<\/p>\n
“It’s early days, and infrastructure is the big challenge, but what we’ve seen so far is very promising.”<\/p>\n
Mr Bleakley believed those challenges were surmountable and that regional Australia could be at the forefront of powering a zero-emission freight future.<\/p>\n
“If we transition the entire truck fleet to electric, we’ll need about 20 per cent more electricity nationally,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But unlike diesel, that energy can be produced locally from renewables.<\/p>\n
“That means we can make our freight network more resilient, cut costs, and keep food and goods moving even if global fuel supplies are disrupted.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Transport is shaping up as one of Australia’s biggest carbon challenges, and one of the hardest to solve.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,150246,19129,164,150244,150243,32645,150245,44,8146,7128,16861,11038],"class_list":{"0":"post-254221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-bleakley","11":"tag-decarbonisation","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-electric-heavy-trucks","14":"tag-electric-trucks","15":"tag-freight","16":"tag-new-energy-transport","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-renewable-energy","19":"tag-solar","20":"tag-transport","21":"tag-trucking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}