Janus Electric: Battery Swapping Retrofit for Heavy-Duty Truck Electrification
Generated: 2026-07-30 · API: Gemini 2.5 Flash · Modes: Summary
Janus Electric: Battery Swapping Retrofit for Heavy-Duty Truck Electrification
Clip title: The EV Truck Idea I Actually Didn’t Believe Until I Saw It Author / channel: Engineering with Rosie URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEXfhdV8BrI
Summary
This video from “Engineering with Rosie” investigates battery swapping as a solution for electrifying heavy-duty trucks, focusing on the Australian company Janus Electric. Following feedback from a previous video highlighting the challenges of charging electric trucks at scale (such as high power demands for warehouses and lengthy road charging times), Rosie explores how battery swapping could overcome these hurdles. She visits Janus Electric’s facility in regional New South Wales to witness their conversion process and discuss the technology’s advantages and scalability with CEO Ben Hutt.
Janus Electric specializes in retrofitting existing diesel trucks into electric vehicles. The conversion process involves removing the entire diesel powertrain – engine, gearbox, fuel systems, and cooling – which is then sold for second-hand use. This is replaced with Janus’s proprietary electric drivetrain, including electric motors, an automatic gearbox, and battery receptacles. The entire transformation is completed in roughly six days. These retrofitted trucks are designed to be lighter than their original diesel counterparts (and significantly lighter than many newly manufactured electric trucks), allowing them to meet existing load limits more easily. The current range for a single trailer (up to 70 tonnes) is approximately 450 km, while road trains (up to 220 tonnes) achieve about 170 km, which is sufficient for the 80% of freight movements that involve shorter, regional, or base-to-base routes.
The core of Janus Electric’s strategy is its battery swapping system, allowing a full battery exchange in less time than it takes to refuel a diesel tank. This eliminates downtime associated with traditional charging. The batteries are air-cooled and designed to be charged slowly at depots, which extends their lifespan and allows them to act as “grid assets” by soaking up excess solar power. Janus offers its batteries and charging infrastructure as a service, reducing the high upfront capital expenditure for fleet operators and making electrification more accessible. Furthermore, the modular design ensures that any Janus-converted truck can use any Janus battery, irrespective of the truck’s original OEM, promoting a degree of interoperability within their ecosystem.
Janus Electric currently has around 30 electric trucks on the road and plans to ramp up production to 50 conversion kits per month by 2027. While government mandates for electric trucks in regions like California and Canada are accelerating adoption, Janus asserts its model is economically viable even without subsidies due to its lower conversion cost (approximately a quarter of buying a new electric truck) and operational efficiencies. A key takeaway from the video is the stark contrast in driving experience between the smooth, quiet electric truck and its loud, bumpy diesel equivalent. However, the video also points out that outdated and inconsistent local council regulations for weight limits and noise curfews continue to hinder broader electric truck adoption, underscoring the need for governmental policy reform to truly accelerate the transition to cleaner transportation.
Video Description & Links
Description
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At a truck depot in regional New South Wales, diesel trucks drive in one end and electric trucks drive out the other. And when those trucks run out of charge, they don’t plug in. They swap the whole battery in less time than it takes to fill a diesel tank.
My last video on electric trucks looked at the challenges they’ll face as they scale, things like getting enough power to the places trucks want to charge, at the times they want to charge. It was very much a problems video, not so much a solutions one. A lot of you pushed back in the comments, saying there are plenty of solutions available today, and battery swapping was the one that kept coming up. You pointed out that swap stations sidestep the whole grid connection problem by charging batteries slowly overnight, that they fit naturally into the depot model fleet operators already use, and that some of you had already seen it working.
Janus Electric came up by name multiple times. So when Janus invited me to their Gosford facility, I took them up on it. I went to see the trucks, see the conversion process, and talk with CEO Ben Hutt about whether battery swapping lives up to the hype.
Janus paid my travel expenses for the visit, which weren’t much since I drove there in my own EV, and they had no control over the final video.
📌Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:45 The Conversion Process 03:25 Vehicle Weight Change 03:47 Range of Batteries 04:26 Why Battery Swapping Instead of Regular Charging? 04:51 Battery Cooling 05:12 Regenerative Braking 06:20 The Components Used In The Conversion 06:58 How Many Janus Trucks Are There in Australia Now? 07:15 The Battery Swapping Process 08:22 Grid Connection Requirement For Charging 09:17 Combining with Solar Power and Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) 09:52 Battery Degredation 10:51 How Are Janus Trucks Lighter? 11:46 Economical Benefits of Battery Swapping 12:23 Interoperability Between Janus and Non-Janus Trucks 13:26 Test Drive: Electric vs Diesel 14:24 Conclusion
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⚙️The Engineering with Rosie team: Rosemary Barnes - Presenter, Producer & Writer Javi Diez - Graphics & Editor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/javierdiezsuarez/?locale=en_US) Jae Chong - Research & Production Assistant
electricvehicle electrictrucks truck trucking
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renewable energy, mechanical engineering, circular economy, clean energy transition, climate change, green economy, stem, women in stem, stem education, Rosemary Barnes, Engineering with Rosie, women in engineering, technology, environmental science, environmental engineering, engineering tutorials, sustainability, science news, engineering news, explainer video, engineering explained, new energy