ABB E-mobility announced details of its new HVC360 fleet charging solution. While the growing number of public charging points is excellent news for EV drivers, these alone do not meet the needs of electric fleets. Despite comprising just 4% of vehicles, buses and trucks contribute 40% of global transport emissions, making their rapid electrification a vital step in the decarbonization process.

Slightly fewer than 66,000 electric busses were sold worldwide in 2022, around 4.5% of total bus sales. The electrified share of the bus market is rising quickly, however, by 20% in Europe and 27% in the US, with India accounting for more demand than the US and Europe combined, and the Chinese market acquiring 98% of all e-buses globally.

With this rapid rise comes significant demand for more flexible and efficient charging solutions to enable e-bus fleets to keep running from the space-restricted urban depots where they are often based. ABB E-mobility’s new HVC360 power cabinet, being displayed this week at the UITP global public transport summit in Barcelona, represents a step in helping to deliver depot charging, embracing the complexities of fleet operations rather than forcing them to adapt.

Offering flexibility for any site layout or use case, each HVC360 power cabinet enables the connection of up to four charging stations as far as 100m from the power cabinet itself, while its proven, compact design allows installation back-to-back, side-to-side, or along a wall.

Dynamic charging capability allows the HVC360 to allocate differing levels of power to each charging station, based on the number of vehicles plugged in or their charging requirements, while the unit also supports all charging interfaces simultaneously, from CCS to pantograph.

Another example of HVC360’s global near-term potential can be found in the haulage industry. Nearly 60,000 medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks were sold worldwide in 2022, just 1.2% of the truck market as a whole. But with the sector continuing to expand at a CAGR as high as 47.5%, global sales are expected to surpass 1.1 million per year by the end of the decade. Such rapid growth will be necessary to meet the ambitious climate goals of many nations around the world, but can only be achieved if supported by flexible, efficient charging infrastructure, both en-route and in depots.

ABB E-mobility’s HVC360 will be available in CE and UL markets at the end of September 2023.