Scania has shown a prototype of an electric truck that uses solar panels to provide additional power for propulsion (writes Nick Flaherty).
The truck is a regular 100 kWh Scania plug-in hybrid connected to a trailer with 200 kWh of additional batteries as a power bank. These are connected to the solar panels.
“When we first began thinking about this, our starting point was the lithium-ion batteries used in battery-electric trucks,” said Eric Falkgrim, a technology leader at Scania’s Research and Innovation department and the project manager for the truck. “In the time that Scania has been working with that technology, we’ve seen the batteries become lighter, cheaper and more energy-dense.” Read more…