– Germany has opened its first public megawatt charging station for electric trucks, a milestone in efforts to decarbonise freight transport along major highway routes.
The charger was inaugurated this week at the Lipperland Süd rest stop on the A2 motorway near Bielefeld as part of the “HoLa – High-Power Charging for Long-Distance Truck Transport” project, coordinated by Fraunhofer ISI and consultancy P3 Group. The programme, launched in 2021, is backed by the Federal Ministry of Transport and aims to install five charging hubs along the A2 between Berlin and the Ruhr area.
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“Megawatt charging marks the start of a new chapter in electric logistics,” said Prof. Patrick Plötz of Fraunhofer ISI. “For the first time, heavy-duty trucks can be charged for a range of hundreds of kilometers in just 30 to 45 minutes; this is the prerequisite for an economically viable electrification of long-haul trucking.”
Christian Hirte, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport, added: “With HoLa, we are putting a key technology for climate-friendly freight traffic on the road. This will make the use of battery-electric trucks over long distances more flexible and more economical.”
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The Lipperland Süd installation, operated by EnBW mobility+ and built by ABB, provides up to 1.2 megawatts of charging power — three times higher than standard CCS chargers. Four truckmakers, Daimler Truck, MAN, Scania and Volvo, are involved in testing the megawatt charging standard (MCS) with their vehicles.
HoLa has €12 million in government funding under Germany’s Electric Mobility Funding Guideline, supplemented by EU support. Shell joined the consortium earlier this year and will equip and operate three of the project’s sites with CCS and MCS technology.
Source: isi.fraunhofer.de, mantruckandbus.com
