Inside the Race to Electrify Semi Trailers for Long Haul Freight

A semi-trailer that helps propel itself entered commercial road testing in late May, when a powertrain kit developed by Nivalis Energy Europe , headquartered in Luxembourg with engineering operations in Germany, was fitted to a trailer supplied by Amsterdam-based TIP Group . The self-powered trailer was handed over to German transport operator Sommer for use in its working fleet. The Nivalis Powered Trailer Kit centers on an electric axle co-developed with Wiehl, Germany–based running gear specialist BPW , rated at 50 kilowatts peak, capable of both propulsion assistance and regenerative braking . That axle draws on a 60-kilowatt-hour, 400-volt lithium-ion battery pack charged from three sources: the axle itself during braking and deceleration, a full-rooftop array of photovoltaic panels generating up to 3.7 kilowatts-peak, and a 32-amp, three-phase AC grid connection available during parking stops. The driver’s only window into the system is a small display readable from the cab’s side mirror that shows the system status and battery charge level. Nothing about the trailer’s handling or licensing requirements changes. The partners project savings of up to 7,000 liters of diesel per trailer per year, which is enough to keep about 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air. These figures are based on a trailer running 100,000 kilometers annually at payloads between 20 and 24 tonnes, on a mix of long-haul and hub-to-hub routes. Pavel Gilman , vice president of sales and marketing at Nivalis, breaks down where those savings come from: roughly 30 to 35 percent from the electric axle during braking and deceleration, 11 to 15 percent from the rooftop solar panels, and the remainder (roughly half) from grid charging during parking stops. The pilot is planned to run for more than a year, spanning multiple seasons. The retrofit cost has not been disclosed, and the pilot is running on a single trailer. But the underlying assumptions are now on the table and they represent a specific, high-utilization use case (meaning a truck that’s almost always on the move, filled to capacity with freight) not a universal one. Across Europe and North America, a growing number of companies have concluded that electrifying the trailer, rather than replacing the tractor unit, may be the fastest and most cost-effective path to decarbonizing long-haul freight. A new battery-electric heavy truck carries a high upfront cost and demands charging infrastructure that most freight corridors do not yet reliably provide. A retrofit kit fitted to an existing trailer is meant to sidestep both problems. The question the industry has been working to answer is whether the energy harvested from regenerative braking, rooftop solar , and grid charging in short bursts when the vehicle is parked for loading and unloading is enough to produce savings that recover the kit’s cost in a reasonable timeframe. Several companies now believe the answer is yes, and they are accumulating field data to prove it—though not all of them are going about it the same way. Trailer industry places its bets The competitive landscape has taken shape most visibly in Germany. Trailer Dynamics , an Aachen-based company, has conducted field tests with BMW Logistics , DB Schenker , Duvenbeck , and Volkswagen Konzernlogistik , reporting average fuel savings of around 40 percent for diesel tractor combinations, substantially higher than the up to 18 percent reduction implied by the Nivalis projection. The difference traces directly to battery size, but Trailer Dynamics frames the choice as an economic question rather than an architectural one. “The discussion should not start with battery size, but with the economics of the transport operation,” the company said in response to written questions. “There is no single battery capacity that is universally right for every fleet.” Trailer Dynamics’s modular system offers three configurations ranging from 187 to 551 kilowatt-hours, sized to match route profile, annual mileage, payload, and charging access. The M300 version, whose designation reflects the capacity of its 300-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery supplied by Chinese battery manufacturer CATL , adds approximately four tonnes to the trailer, roughly three times the one-to-1.4–tonnes added to a trailer by the Nivalis system. Both companies’ systems would extend the range of a battery-electric tractor by reducing the energy demand on the tractor’s motor. But Trailer Dynamics explicitly targets that use case, claiming its self-propelled trailer yields combined ranges of up to 850 kilometers—enough to eliminate intermediate charging stops on many long-haul routes. Nivalis has not published range extension figures for electric tractor combinations, and its smaller battery and peak lower output suggest the effect would be more modest. That higher energy storage capability widens the addressable market for Trailer Dynamics considerably and helps explain the investment flowing into the self-propelled trailer space. In November 2025, the European Investment Bank extended a €25 million loan to the company , backed by the European Union’s InvestEU program , to support commercialization. Trailer Dynamics says it plans to begin industrial-scale production in 2028, with adoption expected to accelerate as European carbon dioxide reduction requirements tighten toward 2030. ZF , the German automotive supplier, entered the space with its TrailTrax system, using an electric axle rated at up to 210 kilowatts continuous power. ZF claims that, between onboard battery storage and energy recovered via regenerative braking, the self-propelled trailer system yields up to 16 percent in energy and carbon dioxide savings when combined with an ICE powered truck. The company also says TrailTrax can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 40 percent with opportunistic plug-in charging. Trailer manufacturers Kässbohrer and Krone have adopted the platform, as has BPW—the same running gear specialist co-developing the Nivalis axle. In North America, Range Energy is developing a system with up to 300 kilowatt-hours of onboard energy capacity, compatible with diesel, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cell tractors. Range, which has announced a partnership with ZF , to help drive the development and adoption of the Range eTrailer System within the North American commercial trucking industry, is now equipping its trailers with ZF’s AxTrax 2 e-axle for battery-powered propulsion. Range Energy has a separate pilot agreement with DB Schenker, the German logistics company that is also among the European operators that tested the Trailer Dynamics system. Range and DB Schenker say they plan to deploy a powered trailer in commercial trucking operations in North America, with first deliveries scheduled for later this year. The breadth of activity across continents reflects a field that has moved well past the question of whether powered trailers work. The argument now is about which architecture works best and at what cost. What the field does not yet have is a common standard for measuring and reporting savings. The figures from various pilots—an average of 40 percent from Trailer Dynamics, up to 18 percent implied by the Nivalis projection—reflect different routes, loads, seasons, and battery sizes. In some cases, they represent short validation runs rather than sustained operational data. Fleet operators evaluating competing systems are working with numbers that are difficult to interpret and impossible to rank against one another. Both architectures reduce available payload, but by very different margins. The M300’s roughly four-tonne addition dwarfs the one-to-1.4-tonne addition of the Nivalis system. Trailer Dynamics argues the weight penalty is largely academic in practice, because more than 90 percent of trailer movements are constrained by cargo volume before they approach legal weight limits. Under current European regulations , both systems reduce payload on a one-for-one basis. Frameworks under discussion would change that. New rules could allow up to four extra tonnes for electric trucks, with proposals to extend the provision to electric trailers. If amended, the payload effect would turn positive for both systems. Until then, every kilogram of kit is a kilogram unavailable for freight. Small versus large battery systems The choice between large-battery and small-battery powered trailers is a bet on which cost will fall faster: battery pack prices or the cost of grid charging infrastructure. A large-battery system delivers higher savings but requires reliable charging access across the operating cycle. If infrastructure buildout stalls—as it has repeatedly in heavy-duty transport—operators face the same dependency problem that has slowed battery-electric truck adoption. The Nivalis architecture hedges against that risk: its 32-amp connection requires only a standard industrial outlet, and the solar array and regenerative braking handle significant energy input without infrastructure at all. Gilman frames the design philosophy in terms of the industry it serves. “Logistics lives with low margins,” he said. “We are focused on the product which fits the industry technically and financially. It overcomes the capital expenditure hurdle and maximizes financial benefit by adding sources of energy which are symbiotic to each other.” And because Nivalis’s axle is comparatively light, he says, operators won’t be forced to reduce payload. Trailer Dynamics sees it differently. “Long-haul transport will increasingly move toward depot-based and destination-based charging models,” says Michael W. Nimtsch, the company’s Managing Director. “The question is not how small a battery can be made, but how much economic value each additional kilowatt-hour can generate over the life of the vehicle.” On solar and regenerative recovery, Nimtsch argues both are useful complements to stored battery energy rather than substitutes for it. “Compared with the daily energy demand of a long-haul truck, solar generation remains relatively modest,” he says. The Nivalis energy breakdown supports that view in relative terms: Grid charging contributes the largest share of projected savings, regenerative braking second, and solar third. That hierarchy means performance depends more on charging access during dwell time than the multi-source framing might suggest even if that access requires only a standard industrial outlet. Trailer Dynamics prices its system between €145,000 and €195,000 and targets a payback period of no more than five years. Nivalis targets five to six years at current costs, falling to three to four years as volumes grow. Asked exactly what the price tag says, the company declined to answer. The minimum annual savings needed, Gilman said, is between €5,000 and €6,000 per trailer. Until someone publishes a full year of results from a trailer running in normal commercial rotation, fleet operators cannot answer the two questions that actually drives adoption: What does this cost, and when does it pay back?