Best of LinkedIn: Charging & Battery Technology CW 44/45 2026

Electric Truck Charging and the 2030 CO2 Targets

• Mercedes-Benz Trucks calls for weaker CO2 targets, and truck makers want 2030 pushed back to 2033
• Transport & Environment says compliance needs 23% electric truck sales in 2030, not 35%
• Real demand is put at around 4,000 MCS chargers in 2030, against an industry claim of 35,000
• Daimler Truck went from 0 to 7% electric trucks in four years
• Volvo Trucks sold 800 electric trucks out of 38,000 so far in 2026
• Decade Energy argues for keeping 2030 and adding batteries behind existing depot grid connections
• Deimos argues electrified trailers could change where and when trucks need to charge

Depot Power and Megawatt Charging Hubs

• ICCT and Fraunhofer ISI expect around 100 TWh of truck charging a year by 2035 and around 200 TWh by 2045
• 70 to 80% or more of that energy is expected to be charged at depots
• The busiest 10% of locations will take 60 to 90% of each country’s truck charging energy, with peaks of 20 to 50 MW
• Long haul trucks grow from about 27% of Europe’s electric truck stock in 2030 to about 50% by 2045
• PragmaCharge opens its first UK hub near the Port of Felixstowe, with eight Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 trucks
• Fastned opens two dedicated truck lanes at Kloosters on the A58
• OMV and Siemens eMobility open the first SICHARGE FLEX in Kufstein, charging trucks from 20 to 80% in around 45 minutes
• BAMA Gruppen’s MAN eTGX charges from 20 to 80% in under 30 minutes at ASKO’s 750 kW depot

Truck Business Models: Swapping, Aggregation and V2G

• Swaptopus, a joint venture of Octopus Energy and CATL, builds HGV battery swapping for an autonomous freight future
• Plugit runs nine truck charging sites across Finland and Sweden, sized for the 45 minute driver break
• Paua aggregates UK public and shared private depot truck charging into one app, one card and one invoice
• go EV launches a skid mounted charger, BESS and switchboard combo delivering up to 640 kW to a single CCS handle
• Truck V2G is stuck on battery warranties, not on the electronics
• MAN demonstrated bidirectional charging with a 480 kWh eTGX at a logistics depot, with 10 to 20% lower electricity costs

Bidirectional Charging Gets Cheaper

• Ford’s Fathom starts below $30,000 and needs no separate wall mounted inverter
• Its onboard unit can supply more than 10 kW of AC power to a home
• Ford expects Home Backup Power to cost at least 60% less than its first generation system
• Ford’s AC approach uses LIN-CP, demonstrated by University of Delaware researchers
• From 1 January 2027, new EU recharging points must support ISO 15118-20, but offering bidirectional charging stays optional
• BMW and E.ON pay up to €720 a year for plugged in hours, while a bidirectional DC wallbox still costs around €3,000
• Portland General Electric’s VPP passes 600 MW and forecasts nearly 958 MW by the end of 2028
• 24% of Dutch EV drivers want bidirectional charging within a year and 58% in the longer term

Utilization and Charging Economics

• Kempower grew revenue 12% in January to September while new public DC fast charging installations fell 11%
• European BEV registrations grew 55% in Q3, and energy through Kempower chargers rose 83%
• US fast charging utilization has hovered around 16% for more than a year, with Canada closer to 10%
• The Tesla Diner in Hollywood handles about 1,600 sessions a day across 80 stalls
• A Claude and GeoSQL analysis puts 762 EnBW fast charging sites at 25.8% occupancy against 14.4% for competitors
• A landlord warns $3,000 a month in charger income can turn into a negative $15,000 once parking is lost
• One hour of Level 2 charging adds about 25 miles, against about 20 miles driven per day

Charging Networks, Expansion and Deals

• EVgo reports $91 million Q3 revenue and 5,530 stalls, up 20%, with a 750kW architecture from 2027
• EVgo opens its first Supercharger site, a 12 stall station at Regency Centers’ Riverside Square in Chicago
• Rivian now operates 1,185 DC fast charging ports at 165 US locations, up 39% in ports
• Slovakia completes 224 charging points of at least 300 kW at 34 motorway rest areas
• Kempower and GREENSPOT plan 30 retail stations across France by the end of 2027
• Huawei’s first pilot at IONITY runs 720 kW across six charge points
• Electra takes over 47 Mercedes-Benz charging hubs, and Blink reports its first adjusted EBITDA positive quarter
• Berg Insight expects connected charging points in Europe and North America to grow from 12.9 million in 2025 to 35.6 million in 2030

Pricing, Access and Driver Experience

• A UK review proposes tariff porting, letting drivers use their domestic tariff at local public chargers
• The UK government plans a taskforce, and Germany’s Durchleitung serves as a model
• Open questions remain on the access fee and on chargers that are occupied or unavailable
• Four in ten Dutch EV drivers do not know what their next charging session will cost
• 77% want the price on the charger display and 70% in their app
• Plug and Charge covers at least 41% of US vehicle and charger combinations, and 77% among top models and networks
• More than 170 shopping centers asked CBRE about leasing stalls for DC fast charging in October

Battery Technology, Scaling and Second Life

• Factorial describes three valleys of death on the way from 5 Ah lab cells to millions of automotive cells
• Its first 1,000 solid state cells put the technology into the first vehicles with Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis
• At 5C, a 4 mAh cm⁻² electrode carries four times the areal current of a 1 mAh cm⁻² electrode
• China’s newest batteries recharge from 10% to nearly full in under 10 minutes
• Redwood Materials wires more than a hundred retired Rivian packs into a 10 MWh battery
• Voltfang’s CEO says Europe is not ready for second life BESS business models
• A class action alleges defective high voltage batteries in the Volkswagen ID.4
• A South African road trip points to 50 to 55 kWh, against the Geely E2’s 39.4 kWh

Thanks to Volodymyr Bilonenko, Chris Powers, Siyu Huang, Dr. Manjit Singh Grewal, Peter Krull, Michael Ford, Angelo E., Will Rowe, Jaap Burger, Anderson Chan, David Streitfeld, Stef Cornelis, Nicholas Yeoh, Abdullah Jaber, Henk-Jan Kruit, Kyle Levy, Jamie Sands, Jess Shanahan, Joseph Seager, Weldon Kennedy, Carl-Magnus Norden, Christophe Lephilibert, Jan Tore Gjøby, Marko Lubar, Syed Haseeb Hassan, Jussi Vanhanen, Gabriel Kjos, Ivan Korotenko, Michal Kubinec, Bill Pierce, Eimantas Balta, Badar Khan, Steve Taylor, Bhasker Kaushal, Niall Riddell, Mark Peternell, Chris Rubio, Alex Keros, Loren McDonald, Ellie Cohen, Jaan Juurikas, Stian Mathisen, Mark Duxbury, Sebastian Lucae, Paul Gioupis, Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff, Robert Hayes, Luke D Schüette, Chris Kaiser, Paula Savonen, Marc Horowitz, Steve Letendre, Quincy Edmund Lee, Kimon Beckmann, Simon Voss, Caspar Jansson, Martin Salamon, Matthew Lichtash, Nick Huzar, Rob Miller, Hideki Machida, Matthew Eastwood, Patrik Krizansky, Eric van Voorden, Guillaume Allio, Bart Saunders, Oliver A., Jayant Somani, David Rodriguez and Richard Laxton for contributing insights to this edition.