JANUS: Talking to the Converted

In-depth

30 May

Janus

**The God of Beginnings, Transitions and Time. Depicted as having two faces – one looking forward whilst the other looks back.**

You’d think a bloke who has made his money from diesel – both in his trucks and selling the oily liquid to others – would be set in his ways. But not Lex Forsyth.

Lex is standing in front of his Kenworth T403 at the Brisbane Truck Show. You’d be forgiven for giving it a nod and walking on by – unless you were sharp eyed and noticed that the stacks were missing.

Then, on closer inspection you may notice that the grill is solid. And what are those on each side? Hinges?

Must be an easier way to access the front of the engine. Clever Kenworth.

Open grill doors…Engine? Where’s the bloody engine?

Let’s go back to when Lex’s young daughter had a go at him for his involvement in polluting the planet.

“Ignore your kids at your peril,” commented Lex. “The fact is, she brought to the fore something I’d been throwing around mentally for a while, so I told her I’d see what I could come up with.”

Move forward in time and, at a conference, Lex ran into Bevan Dooley, an old friend he’d not seen in some fifteen years. It turned out that Bevan had been having similar thoughts to Lex, and Janus was born.

“The problem with every other electric powered vehicle is that the batteries are fixed in place. They drain and need recharging. On cars in suburbia this is not a problem as you don’t travel that far and can recharge overnight, or at one of the power stations springing up.

“Early on we identified that the battery had to be interchangeable. We can’t have fixed batteries on a truck that limit the vehicle to both technological progress and range. That keeps us in suburbia and you’re paying for a battery on a truck that essentially will be superseded within months with new technology that is coming.”

**It takes all of 3 minutes to swap over the batteries (that’s it on the left)**

“We had the conversation and Bevan said, ‘we could put a battery in and out through the front of the truck, if only all the chassis rails were the same’. I told him that they were…

“I looked at him and he looked at me and that’s when the lightbulb moment occurred. We’ve created a system and a solution that caters for the electrical grids around the world that are not able to sustain fast charging for big batteries.

“We’ve also created an environment so that the fleet operator gets the latest technology and is kept up-to-date with the best cell technology that is available, simply because you can pull it out and put another one back in.”

The Grill on this truck simply opens up and a forklift inserts a battery. It’s beautifully simple and very clever. The truck has 3500 N metres of torque from zero right through to 3200 RPM.

It is a 600 kWh battery driving a 350 kW Dayna TM4 electric motor. This is 70 ton rated prime mover and the motor will pull it. The 350 kW motor is equivalent to 530 hp. It’s going to do the job.

Lex says the regenerative braking done through the electric motor is huge. Driving bobtail across Brisbane to the show he hardly touched the brakes which will be an area of saving for anyone that eventually gets into this type of vehicle. That regenerative power also acts as a very effective Jake brake.

The truck will pull a B double and when I asked about a trip from Sydney to Melbourne along the Hume, Lex said that one battery change would need to occur at Tarcutta which would take about three minutes and then you would be on your way again. He predicted the cost of that trip to be around $525 – that’s with that battery change.

If you’re heading Sydney to Brisbane the guys have identified Taree, Grafton and possibly Coffs Harbour for battery changeovers.

Directly opposite his stand at the truck show was displayed product from the world’s biggest truck manufacturer. Just up the way was another display from Australia’s biggest truck manufacturer. Neither had an electrically powered prime mover.

So given that battery changeover points would be available between Melbourne – Sydney – Brisbane, the country’s busiest routes, how will this truck perform?

Try 3,500 Nm from zero right through to 3,500rpm! There is not an operating prime mover in the world that comes within a bull’s roar of those figures. Pulling a B-double will not be a problem and you’re going to leave the lights and any competition in your dust.

**Ancillary equipment placement is not a problem in a prime mover**

Electric is coming whether we like it or not. Funny how it looks so much better and attracts so much more public interest when it’s clothed in a Kenworth body. Add fake stacks and you’ve got the complete look. It’s just that no-one will hear you coming – or going! Maybe a BOSE system to pipe in the sound of your fave CAT or Cummins donk. Think I’ll go for a Detroit 6V71 and turn the volume up LOUD!

Lex is a transport operator who has run trucks all his life - he certainly no fool. When a man with his experience gets involved in this new – in his and Bevan’s case let’s call it ground-breaking – technology, people would do well to take notice.