Janus Electric expands Charge & Change network

Electric truck conversion specialist Janus Electric has added to its growing network of Charge & Change Stations, allowing owners of its swappable-battery trucks to go further.

The company recently added a new Adelaide charging station to its network, which so far includes sites in Melbourne, Brisbane and freight hubs further afield like Moorebank, Mount Gambier, Bunbury and Berkeley Vale.

Janus Electric CEO Lex Forsyth told Fleet HV News that the next two stations are planned for Beresfield and Clyde in New South Wales, but the company hopes to take its network nationwide in the future.

“We’re eventually looking to roll out four to five charging stations per capital city, so they cover the major arterials, which will be somewhere between 50 and 100 charge stations across the network,” Lex said.

“But we’re also looking to electrify the national highway as well, so we are looking at how we do the Hume, how we do the Pacific, how we do the Bruce and so on.

“Battery technology will play a big part in that too, because as we can go further with the battery, you start to be able to utilise different freight routes.”

Janus Electric is expanding its Charge & Change network with its customers in mind, working to establish locations that allow operators to better utilise the all-electric heavy-duty trucks. 

“It’s all battery swapping based, so we haven’t put truck charging in for plug-in electric trucks – it’s focused on our solution,” Lex said.

“We’re not following the EV car path where we go and build an EV charging station then hope they come. Instead we’re working with our customers to responsibly build these in networks where it makes sense for the fleet operators. That way we get good utilisation and they have good availability of charging.”

A benefit of the swap-and-go system, Lex says, is that Janus has control over when and how it charges its swappable batteries – maximising the use of renewable energy. 

“Because we swap the batteries out, we’ve got really good control over when we take power from the grid,” he said.

“During the day, when the big renewables are in production we turn our chargers up and take as much as we can.”

While many of Janus Electric’s customers rely on the charging stations, Lex explains that if a buyer wants to handle their own battery charging on-site then the company accommodates that.

“That’s the beauty of the Janus solution, is the fleet can choose the level of capital intensity they’d like to have,” he said.

“If they want to own their own batteries, they can own them, but they can then operate them in the ecosystem if they want to – using them like essentially a swap and go gas bottle.

“Or they can hire the battery from our ecosystem and pay a fee.”

There are now 23 converted Janus Electric trucks out on the road – across its customer fleets and in-house-owned trucks – and Lex tells us they’re a mix of Kenworth, Freightliner and Western Star models. They’ve even done cabover Volvo trucks too.

In terms of what the future holds, Lex tells us the company is gearing up to release new technology to the market in early 2025 that will be “an absolute game changer,” but he can’t give too much away just yet.