Battery swapping gets a $26 million bet as truck fleets weigh charging models

Electrovaya and Janus put a dollar figure on truck swapping

For fleet operators, a swap cuts refuelling to minutes. It can also shrink the number of depot chargers a site needs.

Janus Electric is an Australian firm bringing Class 8 heavy-duty electric truck conversions to North America. Its battery-as-a-service offer bundles charging and swapping rather than selling a pack outright. Electrovaya calls its chemistry Infinity Battery Technology. It says the chemistry suits daily swapping cycles. The announcement gave no truck count for the first phase. Electrovaya describes the $26 million figure as just the opening round of US and Canadian orders.

China's swap network sits behind a 50% electric truck share

Electric trucks made up 50.3% of heavy trucks sold in China in September, or 33,100 units. That was up 37% from a year earlier. The overall heavy-truck market shrank 21%.

Through the first nine months of 2026, China sold 226,400 electric heavy trucks, up 64%, for a 38.1% share. Behind that share sits a swap network. CATL's Qiji brand ran about 300 heavy-truck swap stations at the end of 2025. It plans 900 by the end of this year and 2,000 in 2027. Its standardised packs hold 432 kWh and 513 kWh and swap in about five minutes. In tractors, the big rigs that pull long-haul trailers, the September share hit 64.5%. In August, CATL agreed to pay 2.56 billion yuan, about $370 million, for nearly 25% of Qiyuan Green Power. Qiyuan runs more than 1,600 charging and swap stations. The effect reaches the fuel data: China's diesel demand is on track to fall by about 230,000 barrels per day this year.

India adds a swap station and a 500-truck plan

Energetica India reported on 28 October 2026 that Blue Energy Motors and HPCL had operationalised Bhiwandi's first battery-swapping station for electric heavy-duty trucks. The station swaps packs in under five minutes. It extends the Mumbai-Pune Electric Freight Corridor Blue Energy Motors launched in October 2025.

Energy In Motion signed a memorandum of understanding with Sorigin Green Mobility to deploy 500 electric heavy commercial vehicles across India over two years. The programme starts with 18 vehicles in the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority ecosystem. EIM will supply its Ashwa 55-tonne electric tractors with charging infrastructure, battery-swapping networks and energy-management software. Sorigin handles fleet financing, operations and maintenance. It lets customers pay for freight moved rather than buy vehicles upfront.

The Bhiwandi site sits in one of the Mumbai region's main warehousing hubs.

The economics work in some cases, not all

The case rests on cost per tonne-kilometre. A study by the ICCT and China's CATARC found battery-electric trucks about 19% cheaper per tonne-km than diesel in good conditions. The same study found they lose that edge at low annual mileage, or when battery weight eats into payload. CATL claims savings of about 0.6 yuan per km. Independent estimates are more measured, Electrek reported.

Plug-in charging is scaling at the same time. It is the alternative swapping has to beat on cost. Kempower supplied 32 DC connectors, each up to 400 kW, to the Electroway hub at Magna Park in Leicestershire. The hub was inaugurated on 14 October. A second phase planned for early 2027 adds megawatt charging at up to 1.2 MW. Operators in India are already running the swap model. Sorigin says it operates EIM electric tractors at Jawaharlal Nehru Port and Tuticorin Container Terminal. Blue Energy Motors says it has more than 1,400 green heavy-duty trucks on key Indian freight routes. It has crossed 150 million green kilometres.

What happens next

It is also taking the swapping model to Europe with Octopus Energy. EIM and Sorigin expect implementation to begin immediately. Blue Energy Motors says it intends to expand its battery-swapping and charging network across key markets.

What none of these announcements settled is whether packs will standardise across truck brands, or what a swap station costs to build.