Kempower puts truck chargers overhead at Bidfood's Slough depot

The installation was designed and delivered by Erinion, the depot charging specialist inside the Scania group and a Kempower sales and service partner. Four Kempower Control Units, dispensers built for heavy-duty use, hang from a gantry above the loading docks, paired with cable arms so drivers reach the plugs from above. Power comes dynamically from a single 600 kW Kempower Power Unit, and each dispenser can deliver up to 160 kW. Two electric trucks run at the site today. Bidfood operates more than 1,200 trucks in the UK, and its Slough depot serves Greater London and the Thames Valley. The setup lets the electric trucks recharge during loading windows of 45 minutes to two hours, without a separate charging stop.

Yard space is the constraint that decides these projects. Overhead charging keeps the ground clear, and Erinion designed the gantry as a modular system so Bidfood can add charging bays as its fleet grows without starting over. Kempower and Bidfood have not disclosed what the Slough installation cost.

The regulatory clock forces the issue. The UK government plans to phase out sales of oil-burning heavy goods vehicles weighing up to 26 tonnes from 2035, and all new HGVs by 2040. Most depots were never designed for high-power charging, which is why retrofits at existing sites matter more than greenfield builds.

Faye Reeve, head of non-inventory procurement at Bidcorp UK, Bidfood's parent company, said the system lets the company "continue operating in the same way, just as efficiently and profitably as before". She called it a blueprint for later phases.

Others attack the problem from the grid side. Go EV, a Melbourne charging supplier, showed a portable skid called ChargeNow that drops into a depot and connects to the site's existing electrical supply, The Driven reported on 30 October. The 20-foot skid carries a 261 kWh lithium-iron-phosphate battery and a 640 kW DC fast charger, supplying up to 700 A of peak current. Its on-board distribution board is rated to 1,000 A, so operators avoid building a new switchroom. A second skid can double storage. Go EV says the approach saves months of grid upgrades and civil works.

Mark Lampard, a director of Go EV, said the skid lets operators "deploy ahead of planned fixed infrastructure to allow electric trucks to begin operation sooner".

Fixed hubs are scaling too. EV Realty opened its first Powered Property in San Bernardino in April 2026, Charged EVs reported on 28 October. It has 76 high-power charging ports and 9 MW of capacity, enough for more than 200 trucks a day. The Kempower hardware there runs at up to 500 kW on CCS and up to 1.2 MW on MCS. Announced customers include J.B. Hunt Transport, Gate City Beverage and Nevoya. In September 2026 the company bought a second site in Ontario, California, where construction is due to start in 2027.

China shows the scale question answered. Electric trucks made up 50.3% of heavy trucks sold in China in September, 33,100 vehicles, up 37% from a year earlier, Electrek reported on 2 November. 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. Charging and swapping scaled with them. CATL's Qiji brand ran about 300 heavy-truck swap stations at the end of 2025, and plans 900 by the end of this year and 2,000 in 2027. Its standardised packs hold 432 kWh or 513 kWh and swap in about five minutes. 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 fuel data follows. China's diesel demand is on track to fall by about 230,000 barrels per day this year, with battery and natural gas trucks doing most of the work.

India is at the start of the same curve. Energy In Motion signed a memorandum of understanding with Sorigin Green Mobility to deploy 500 electric heavy commercial vehicles over two years, Autocar Professional reported on 2 November. The first 18 go into the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority ecosystem. EIM supplies 55-tonne Ashwa tractors plus charging, swapping and energy management, while Sorigin handles financing and charges customers per freight moved.

Retrofits are another route. CleanTechnica reported on 2 November that Electrovaya has a $26 million supply agreement with Australia's Janus Electric. Janus sells battery-as-a-service for Class 8 diesel-to-electric conversions, bundling charging and swapping. The deal covers an initial phase of orders for the US and Canadian markets.

The next argument is over parked trucks as grid assets. The MAN-backed SPIRIT-E project, announced on 2 November, says electric trucks can feed power back into the grid. Ford has formed a utility working group with five major utilities to define interconnection rules for bidirectional vehicles, ahead of its Fathom truck due in 2027. Ford says Fathom will deliver 10 kW of AC power to a home without a separate wall-mounted inverter.

None of this settles cost. No operator here has published a price per kWh at the plug, and grid connection dates remain the variable fleets cannot control.