Skip to main content
Truck with turbine in background

How charging infrastructure powers the e-mobility shift

Using Siemens Charging: the quiet revolution in mobility

What's it about?

Green electricity instead of diesel: E-mobility is in full swing. Further important milestones are now being reached – in public transport and transportation. Siemens is supplying the complete charging infrastructure.

When you visit Nanno Janssen’s haulage company in Leer in northern Germany, you immediately notice that things are different here than in a traditional depot. For a place where trucks with more than 500 horsepower drive around, it is unusually quiet. Instead of loud diesel engines, electric trucks buzz across the yard.

Nanno Janssen is the fifth generation to run the company. And the sixth generation, his son, is prepared to take over the helm in the future. “Together, my son and I thought about what the future of our company should look like,” says the company’s 58-year-old boss. “And we quickly agreed that we wanted to switch to electromobility.” No sooner said than done: By the end of the year, 50 of the 80 Nanno Janssen trucks will be electric. You can just about hear a quiet whirring sound when the bright red semi-trailer trucks accelerate and roll out of the yard – none of the roaring motors or exhaust fumes that you would expect from diesel trucks.

1393c5c3-f20a-4496-b406-6247fa27d2f9 | SI-2506-2677-Drohne-1-3840x2160
two e-trucks at charging station

The rest of the fleet will follow by 2030, with a few exceptions, such as special operations with the crane truck, which still runs on diesel.

In 2021, Nanno Janssen decided to focus entirely on electromobility, even though an electric truck still cost around three times as much as its diesel counterpart at the time. The Federal Office of Logistics and Mobility had set up a funding pot for electric trucks: They reimbursed 80 percent of the additional costs compared to diesel vehicles. The charging infrastructure also received an 80-percent subsidy; for Janssen, this was an opportunity to get fully involved in electromobility. He ordered his first 20 trucks and installed a complete charging infrastructure from Siemens in his yard. The facility has a transformer station with a capacity of 4 megawatts, a 1.2-megawatt battery storage system, and ten SICHARGE D charging stations, each with a capacity of 300 kilowatts and a total of 20 charging points. This means that it is possible to charge up to 20 trucks at the same time.

Siemens was able to supply the entire infrastructure from a single source. That made the whole process and the funding procedure much easier.
Nanno Janssen, CEO - Nanno Janssen GmbH

Nanno Janssen has also installed a photovoltaic system with an output of up to 800 kW on a field next to his depot. Thanks to the battery storage and charging management system, he can charge his vehicles or feed the solar power into the grid as required. “With diesel, I’m dependent on oil suppliers,” he says. “With photovoltaics and the electrified vehicle fleet, now not only am I independent, I’m also an electricity trader.”

Across Europe with the joy of experimentation

The haulage company Nanno Janssen is already using dozens of fully electric trucks to transport goods across Europe, together with a complete charging infrastructure from Siemens.

With its decision to focus fully on electromobility, Janssen is currently one of the pioneers among freight forwarders. Others have purchased one or two vehicles so they can cautiously test the extent to which they can replace diesel trucks on certain routes. Janssen is more willing to experiment. “I thought to myself, let’s just see what we can do with it.” His success proves him right. Around 90 percent of his routes – both local and long-distance – can be covered electrically.

The electric vehicles now regularly travel across Europe – to Sweden, Italy and Portugal, for example – and even deliver new Siemens charging stations along the way. This pioneering role fits perfectly with Siemens’ goal of building a strong eMobility ecosystem – with pioneers using an ever-increasing number of vehicles and a smart, efficient charging infrastructure as the backbone.

Collaborations with industry experts such as Janssen show what is possible – if nothing else then to convince other freight forwarders and logistics companies to opt for e-vehicles. The stronger the market grows and the more e-vehicles are put on the road, the more the costs will fall.

From long-distance transport to bus fleets

Electromobility is making progress not only in freight transport, but also in local public transport. Some transport companies already have several hundred e-vehicles in use today. Siemens ensures that the charging infrastructure in the depots functions smoothly.

Siemens is actively shaping change not only with haulage companies such as Nanno Janssen, but also in local public transportation. Some transport companies already have several hundred electric vehicles. Siemens has set up the charging infrastructure for many depots.
For example at Hamburger Hochbahn AG or in London, the Walworth depot, which is more than 100 years old, and was electrified with Siemens technology in order to charge the red double-decker buses there.

charging e-bus
city bus london

Whether in public transport or at haulage companies like Nanno Janssen, one of the strengths of Siemens solutions is that they can be flexibly adapted to the customer’s needs.

  • On Nanno Janssen’s spacious yard in the middle of the North German meadows, for example, compact chargers have been installed: columns with two charging cables each, just like those found in public parking lots. They contain all the electronics, such as the inverter, which converts the alternating current from the grid into direct current for charging the vehicle.
  • In narrow bus depots with many vehicles, however, you would need a lot of compact chargers, which take up a lot of space. Here, Siemens offers an alternative in the form of decentralized charging systems, such as the new SICHARGE FLEX system. With this, the charging points with the cables are physically separated from the central power unit, which supplies and controls up to six charging stations at a distance of up to 300 meters with a maximum output of 1.68 megawatts. This eliminates the need for bulky compact charger columns, and the charging cables can be attached to the hall ceiling or walls to save space – allowing many buses to be placed next to each other.

Integrating megawatts safely into the power grid

Whether trucks or buses: If dozens of vehicles of this size are charged at the same time, the power grid must not be overloaded. Sophisticated Siemens software in the high-performance systems ensures that power failures are avoided.

The charging process is controlled by the DepotFinity software, which manages the charging process for the entire depot. For example, the software can be used to specify how many kilowatts each individual vehicle should be charged with. Buses that leave the depot early in the morning for long journeys are given priority so that they are fully charged in the morning. Naturally, the system also monitors to make sure the total capacity of the power line is not exceeded when charging many vehicles.

Siemens also has a lot to offer for public charging in truck traffic – especially with the new SICHARGE FLEX.

Until now, compact chargers from Siemens have delivered up to 400 kilowatts of charging power. But sometimes truck drivers are in a particular hurry – because when time is money every minute counts. The new 1.68-megawatt chargers would noticeably speed up the charging process.

Thanks to its energy management expertise, Siemens ensures that the existing grid connection is used optimally and peak loads are avoided, ideally in combination with renewable energies such as the photovoltaic systems at Janssen. However, where there isn’t a sufficient grid connection – for megawatt charging, for example – even the best energy management system naturally reaches its limits.

Nanno Janssen’s drivers get on very well with the chargers. The electric trucks in Nanno Janssen’s yard have ranges of up to 600 kilometers. As drivers have to take 45-minute breaks after four and a half hours anyway – i.e. around 360 kilometers – this is usually enough time to recharge the battery sufficiently at the normal chargers until the next prescribed break. And they are also enthusiastic about driving the electric trucks. Compared to their diesel counterparts, the electric vehicles are quieter, more climate-friendly, and offer a more pleasant driving experience with better acceleration. And they have another benefit: According to the drivers’ families, they return home a little more relaxed after long trips with the quiet “electric buzzers”.