Bosch to showcase electrified axle for semitrailers at IAA

Bosch has developed an electrified axle that can be integrated into semitrailers and will be presenting it at the IAA Commercial Vehicles in Hannover.

The electrified axle will power the semitrailer instead of simply allowing it to roll freely. This means they can generate electricity during braking, and feed it into the trailer’s power units.

Bosch says that as much as £9,000 a year can be saved in the case of a refrigerated trailer. If the cooling unit is operated using the power generated in this way, Bosch calculates that it can save up to 9,000 liters of diesel a year.

An electrical start and acceleration boost function can help save additional fuel. Any fuel saving also reduces CO2 emissions. One further advantage, especially for deliveries by urban supermarkets, is that electric cooling units make significantly less noise than diesel-powered ones. Deliveries can therefore be made early in the morning or late in the evening.

Bosch will be offering this technology either for new trailers or as a retrofit solution.

Bosch says the potential demand for this technology is huge. In Europe alone, roughly a quarter of a million trailers with a gross vehicle weight of more than 10 metric tons are newly registered every year. One in five of these is equipped with a refrigeration unit.

Bosch engineers have used passenger-car parts for the electrified axle. Unlike in electric cars, the motors in the electrified axle work only intermittently, starting only if they can recuperate energy. As a result, energy is no longer lost when braking, but is stored in a high-voltage battery. The electricity can be fed into the motors during hill starts, or power the trailer’s refrigeration unit, saving fuel.

Such demand-driven application has a further advantage: since the electric motors are inactive most of the time, recuperating energy or providing assistance when starting or on ascents for only a few seconds or minutes every hour, significantly less expensive production parts from passenger cars can be used in this trailer application. The motors are still powerful enough to move the trailer or to provide start assistance to construction vehicles.