Range Energy announces two partners to electrify refrigerated trailers

Range Energy, a company which builds large-battery electric trailers to help fleets electrify at the drop of a hat, has announced partnerships with Thermo King and ESL Power Systems to bring its technology to refrigerated trailer units.

The idea behind Range’s product is that it adds a battery and an electric motor e-axle to a semi truck trailer, instead of to the tractor itself, which means that a fleet can add electric capabilities without having to buy new tractors. This means the fleet can effectively hybridize its operation without having to buy new tractors.

While this isn’t a fully electric solution, it can still reduce fuel usage by a large amount (independent tests say 36%), and adds new capabilities to a truck – like better control over the trailer and regenerative braking to avoid brake fade.

We met Range at ACT Expo in Anaheim two years ago, where they gave us one of the coolest demos we’ve seen. Just by attaching to a tractor’s kingpin, the system can decide how much power to apply and offers extremely natural feeling movement, making a heavy trailer feel light as a feather:

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Range isn’t quite up to production yet, but they have done some trials. In addition to the independent testing above, Range trialed its technology with Petaluma Egg Farm, up in Northern California, where it says the company saw a 50-70% improvement in MPG for the trucks using Range’s electric trailer.

But the company is still working to find novel applications for its technology, and when we caught up with them at ACT Expo this week, they wanted to focus on how Range trailers could be used for refrigerated freight in order to cut emissions and reduce the need for a separate engine to run the reefer unit.

In service of this, it has partnered with two companies in the refrigeration space – Thermo King, the biggest name in electrified trucks, and ESL Power Systems, a company that manufactures shore power solutions for heavy industry.

Range said Thermo King came to them because they’re the only company with enough energy storage to be able to run a refrigerated unit for an extended period of time. While there are other companies doing electrified refrigerated trailers, Range’s trailer has a much larger 288kWh battery (since it also works as a traction battery for the trailer’s electric motor).

This means it has a lot more energy on board to run a refrigeration unit, which can draw ~5-20kW depending on several factors. Range told us that fleets have told them this would be enough energy to keep the trailer box cold for a full day while unplugged from shore power, even in hot temperatures.

And that’s a big deal, because heretofore, refrigerated units have mostly run with an additional small diesel engine. Removing that engine means less pollution, less diesel usage, more noise, less maintenance, and it also means the refrigerated unit could operate in more environments (for example, you don’t want a running engine indoors if you can avoid it – but an electric unit doesn’t have to deal with that).

Speaking of shore power, that’s what Range is working with ESL to implement. ESL creates small, modular shore power systems which are easier to install, helping fleets save on infrastructure upgrade costs. Their boxes can deliver high-powered 480V 3-phase AC charging.

Plugging into one of these would allow the Range Energy trailer to charge at up to 50kW or so, meaning a 5-6 hour charge time for the 288kWh battery.

Range has already trialed its partnership with Thermo King, in the Petaluma Egg Farm example given above. Although the ESL partnership is newer, and those will be trialed soon.

Range is targeting the end of this year, or possibly the start of next year, for its first customer deliveries.

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