June 2025 Newsletter
Dear HVTT Forum subscribers,
It has been a busy time of year for those of us in the heavy vehicle transport sector in the UK, with several of the major industry events taking place recently. This includes the Commercial Vehicle Show, Multimodal and the Road Transport Expo (my personal favourite), all of which take place near the city of Birmingham in the West Midlands region. This is perhaps apt given that the region—more specifically the areas of Coventry and the Black Country—is considered the birthplace of the UK’s automotive industry. Today, Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin and even Chinese OEM Changan Automotive have large facilities located in the region and there are plans for a 60GWh-per-year battery “gigafactory” in Coventry which would supply batteries to the automotive sector.
The biggest bit of news since the previous newsletter is undoubtedly the hosting of the HVTT18 symposium, held in Québec City, Canada, from 26 to 29 May. This is our premier event, organised once every two years, and by all accounts was a huge success! The sympsium included 95 participants, 53 papers, 7 keynotes speakers, and 16 cases of specially-made symposium beer. I am very sorry that I couldn’t attend this year but have thoroughly enjoyed all the photos and feedback from the other board members. Well done to Julien Lépine, Jonathan Regehr, and the rest of the organising team! Conference papers and photos will be uploaded to the website in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
HVTT18 conference
Julien Lépine – Chairman of the HVTT18 organising committee and HVTT Forum Secretary
As always, the conference presents the opportunity for the HVTT Forum board to get together for its biennial meeting at which, among other things, new board members are elected. This year we welcome nine new board members: Alison Conway (USA), Tobias Johansson (Sweden), Tokologo Komana (South Africa), Doug Latto (New Zealand), Erin Mabry (USA), Pape Masseck Thiam (Canada), Nikhil Muthakana (Netherlands), Huang Wei (Canada) and Tommy Xu (China). As Information Officer, I should also add that the HVTT Forum LinkedIn page has grown by 50% since the last conference (November 2023), and that we have a new newsletter rota which includes a wider variety of inputs from additoinal board members across the world. Sadly, we also bid farewell to several departing board members, some of whom have been involved with the HVTT Forum for many years: Erik Dahlberg, Johan Granlund, Rich Hanowski, Mårten Johansson, Daisuke Watanabe, Michael Atkins, and Veronique Cerezco. Thank you for your support and service!
Existing and new board members in attendance at the HVTT18 symposium
Coming back to UK, much of the innovation and developments in the heavy vehicle sector continues to be around electrification, driven by a strong government mandate to decarbonise the transport sector in line with its legally binding 2050 net zero target. The ongoing government-funded ZEHID trial of electric and hydrogen fuel cell HGVs continues in earnest, with trial participants taking delivery of several new eHGVs (up to 42 tonne GCM) over the last few months. Hydrogen fuel cell HGVs are only expected to be delivered in 2026 at the earliest. In addition, the much-anticipated locations of the trial’s 54 charging infrastructure hubs were officially announced in March by the Minister for the Future of Roads Lilian Greenwood at the ZEHID progress summit. The trial will run for the next five years.
Confirmed eHGV infrastructure locations as part of the UK’s ZEHID trial
Alongside this, the entirely industry-funded Project JOLT (‘Joint Operators Logistics Trial)—led by the led by the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight (SRF) at Cambridge University—is exploring how transport operators can move quickly and cost-effectively to an electric vehicle ‘norm’ for heavy road freight operations in the UK. This will be a very interesting trial to follow, where the lack of government funding to pay for vehicles and chargers means that the assessment of the business case for industry will be far more genuine (in my opinion). The project comprises a ‘round-robin’ trial for which a small fleet of four BEV tractor units is being supplied by Volvo, Scania, DAF and Mercedes; along with mobile fast-charging equipment supplied by Evyve. This equipment is provided to each operator partner in turn for three months at a time during which the partner carries out a pre-agreed series of logistics journey types. Comprehensive high-resolution vehicle and charger performance data and logistics data are collected during these tests and stored in a shared database. The partners have unrestricted access to their own data plus managed access to the much larger shared data set which is anonymized, curated, managed and analysed by the SRF. (My thanks to David Cebon for contributing information on the JOLT trial.)
There have also been a number of important developments regarding eHGV charging hubs in the UK. In March, Netherlands-based Milence (a joint venture between Daimler Truck, TRATON GROUP, and Volvo Group) launched their first UK HGV charging hub in Immingham. The first phase includes eight bays and four chargers with power output of up to 400kW, with costs confirmed to be £0.399/kWh (excl. VAT). (This is widely considered to be competitive, given that pricing for high-powered car charge points in the UK cost up to £0.90/kWh.) UK-based Aegis Energy has secured £100 million in funding to roll out five “multi-energy” hubs (including EV charging and alternative fuels) over the next 3 years, with sites identified in Sheffield, Immingham, Warrington, Corby and Towcester. First Bus—one of the largest bus companies in the UK—have also thrown their hat into the ring by opening 9 of their 14 electric bus depots for use by 3rd-party fleets at rates ranging from £0.33 to £0.63/kWh depending on volumes and membership tiers.
Milence eHGV charging hub in Immingham, UK
Finally, I’d like to share a reminder of the upcoming SRF Workshop taking place in my beautiful city of Cambridge from the 8th to the 9th of December 2025. The deadline for abstracts has now passed, but registration for attendance is open!
As I sign off, we are enjoying a warm, dry and sunny spell across most of the UK, with highs of over 30 degrees forecast for the weekend. Wonderful as this may be for those of us who grew up in sunnier climes, the lack of rain has already led to the official declaration of drought in the north-west of England with reservoirs in the region at historic low levels for this time of year. Also, spare a thought for the tennis players facing the prospect of the hottest start to Wimbledon ever this Monday…
All the best,
Christopher de Saxe
HVTT Forum Information Officer
