A diesel truck goes in one end of a workshop on the New South Wales coast and comes out the other end electric about six days later. That is the process Engineering with Rosie went to see at Janus Electric's Gosford facility, where host Rosie Barnes met chief executive Ben Hutt. Janus does not build trucks. It takes a working diesel prime mover, strips out the engine, gearbox, fuel system and cooling hardware, sells those parts into the used market, and fits an electric drivetrain with swappable battery packs in the space the fuel tanks used to occupy. When one of these trucks runs low, the driver does not plug it in. The packs come out, fresh ones go in, and the video reports the truck is moving again in about four minutes.
The pitch matters more than the party trick. Hutt says converting an existing diesel costs roughly a quarter of what a new electric truck costs, which turns the decision for a fleet from a vehicle purchase into a mid-life refit, timed to the engine or gearbox rebuild these trucks need every five years or so. There are trade-offs the video does not price out. Swapping means an operator has to have access to more packs than it has trucks. Janus says a 40 foot container holds eight batteries and can serve up to ten trucks changing once a day each on a double shift, so that spare inventory is real capital or a real rental line that a plug-in truck does not need. There is also supplier concentration. Hutt says Janus packs fit any Janus-converted truck, whether the cab underneath is a Kenworth, a Volvo or a Mack, but they are not interchangeable with any other battery maker's hardware. An early customer is betting on one company's format staying supported for the working life of the vehicle.
On numbers, the video reports about 450 km of range for a single trailer configuration at up to 70 tonnes fully loaded, and about 170 km for a three power road train pulling 220 tonnes for a mining haulage customer. Hutt argues that covers most Australian work, saying 80 percent of freight moved by trucks this size runs less than 280 km a day and comes back through the same depot or port gate. The drivetrain is an electric motor paired with a 16 speed automatic gearbox. Packs are air cooled both on the truck and inside the charge container, and Hutt says the containers are designed not to need a special grid connection, which is what lets an operator charge slowly and cheaply overnight. He puts expected degradation at under 20 percent over the first eight years, with a second life as stationary storage afterwards. Weight is currently about the same as the donor diesel, and Hutt says newer packs and a smaller drivetrain should cut close to a tonne within months.
Scale is the open question. Janus told Rosie it has 28 trucks running in Australia with four more overseas, and that it plans to produce 50 kits a month by the end of this year, most shipped to partners who install them. Rosie notes some of that growth is helped by government mandates, while Janus maintains the economics work without subsidy. She flags the weight advantage as the quietly important part in Australia, because heavier imported electric trucks have been running into local council axle limits.
Bottom line: The four minute swap is the demo. The number fleet managers should actually chew on is the conversion cost, because electrifying at roughly a quarter of new-truck money on a rebuild cycle you were already paying for is a finance decision rather than a green one. The risk sits in the standard. Janus packs work across truck brands and not across battery brands, so an early customer ties a decade of operation to one supplier. For depot-to-depot work under 280 km a day, that is a small bet. For long corridor haulage, wait until interoperability is more than a stated willingness to talk.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.