The applications best suited for electrification are those with vehicles that have limited range requirements and return frequently to home base for charging. Even better if they never leave that home base. Those are a couple of reasons why terminal tractors lend themselves well to the technology. We talked to Kurt Neutgens,c o-founder, president and CTO of Orange EV at a Greentech session at Truck World. And he tells us why terminal tractors are an ideal application for electrification.

Kurt Neutgens: It really is a drop-in replacement for their diesels, luckily, because we’re very efficient with our vehicles.  But also because of the way we’ve designed our chargers to meet, to work with our trucks. We’re able to do 22 kilowatt charging for our chargers and run 20 hours a day, without anything extra. So it allows us to have a lot smaller footprint on the grid. But that means we don’t have to talk to utility to get started. And so Orange EV has over 1,000 tractors out in the real world, the first one with over eight and a half years. And I think it’s that experience that’s proven that 250 different companies have done it, you know, in Canada and the United States from coast to coast. And so that drives that adoption and capability to say, ‘Hey, I see this is working.’ So it doesn’t have to go very far. You don’t have to worry about range. It’s right there. And there’s a ton of savings. And so the payback is two to three years. It’s not a, ‘I’m doing this so in the future I make money, you know, I can figure it out.’ It’s, ‘I’m gonna save money, right now, if I do this, oh, and by the way, I get ESG. And oh, by the way, it’s uptime is better, and all those other things to know about Orange EV electrics.’

That said, terminal tractors can operate in some pretty harsh conditions, especially a Canadian winter, we asked her how confident he is in electric terminal tractors ability to perform and extreme weather.

Kurt Neutgens: I know it’s, this might be fine. Where’s that from? I’m from Minnesota, it’s kind of cold there too, right. And so I grew up, you know, delivering papers at five in the morning and 40 below was not unheard of. So we make sure our trucks work at 40 below. We have no problem with it. You’ve got to do the right things, get it designed correctly. Even our chargers have heaters in them, right. But if you do it right, we don’t have any problem. In fact, what we find with our customers is, when they get really cold, they are the only truck that’s running, right. And so they’re calling us up and say, ‘Can we get some of your rentals, because like your trucks are running, and we got all these trucks with gelled fuel and everything else.’ So it’s better than diesel in cold weather.

Another attribute of terminal tractors that makes them ideal for electrification is the charging requirements are less demanding and complex than those needed for medium- or heavy-duty trucks.

Kurt Neutgens: The other thing that we can all do is make sure that the charger is the right size for the vehicle. And so we have multiple different sized chargers, we have a 15 kilowatt, a 22 kilowatt and a 70 kilowatt.And then we’ve got even larger charges, two different two different products. But we make sure we try to make sure that a customer who only needs a 22 kilowatt doesn’t go get a 70 or 180 kilowatt charger, because that means they’re reserving that on the grid. And so we can, we can minimize what you need at each application. It’s one of the reasons why Orange EV has been able to roll out so fast and have 1,000 trucks out there and lead the market is because we can go into a facility and put 10 chargers and 10 trucks and never talk to the utility, right because 22 kilowatts is your dryer, right? And so it’s pretty easy. So that’s part of that whole discussion. As far as where to put them, you know, our chargers, they have to be capable of outside, they have to be able to do all the elements, they gotta be able to go to the minus 40 and 125 F. And they have to be where the driver is going to use them. And so we always make sure that it’s where the driver is going to go on their break. And if you put it there that you never have a problem with having the truck ready to go the next time.

A key question, however, is what’s the driving experience? Do shunt truck drivers prefer a diesel machine or one that’s electrified? Kurt has no doubt whatsoever.

Kurt Neutgens: One of the most energizing things in my life is going to — and I don’t get to do it very often anymore — but going to a delivery of a vehicle to a new customer. Because we train other drivers on site and so usually have 10 drivers that teach drivers who are learning how to use this. And there’s always one, maybe two, that is, is coming in loaded for bear. This is never going to work. That’s a stupid thing. Why am I wasting my time? Right? Within two hours that driver is, why are we not doing this everywhere? I’m talking to my management, why are we only getting two trucks? It’s unbelievable the transition, because once they go 20 yards, right up, sorry, 20 meters…I apologize for that, 20 meters, their mind changes, their whole world changes. They realize how much better this is for them. Their stopping distances are halved. They’re not breathing diesel. They’re not shaking like this all day long. The first driver I was ever in the truck with we had our first truck had never delivered to a customer had a friendly and said, let’s try this in your operation. See what goes wrong. And that driver came back the third day and said, My wife is upset with you. And I said, I don’t even know your wife. Right. And he’s like, she said to me last night, you’re coming home every night. I want to go do this. I want to go do that. Are you really working? He had a different level of energy after 12 hours of driving in our truck than a diesel.