Does the battery swapping energy supply mode have better economic potential for electric heavy-duty trucks?

With the boosting process of heavy-duty truck electrification, the most-widely-used charge-type energy supply mode faces the challenges of long recharge time and low transportation efficiency. This paper takes the battery swapping mode into consideration, explores the economic competitiveness of different energy supply modes, including battery swapping, fast charging and supercharging. The comprehensive ton-kilometer cost model is established from the perspective of vehicle–station integrated system, which quantitatively evaluates the system cost per unit mileage and unit freight volume. Based on the model, the influences of both vehicle, station configuration and operation conditions on the system economy are revealed. We show that the supercharge, battery swapping and fast charging mode has better economy under short, medium and long recharge distance, respectively. The optimum recharge distance for battery swapping mode is 156 km. The battery swapping is the most cost-effective energy supply mode for electric heavy trucks when the station utilization rate is higher than 43%, and the vehicle operation speed is higher than 32 km/h, which has also been superior to the diesel heavy trucks, and the battery swapping optimum area will be further expanded with the battery technology improvement and traffic density increase in the future. •Battery swapping improves transportation efficiency for electric heavy trucks compared to charging.•Vehicle–station integrated ton-kilometer cost model is established for economic evaluation.•Charging and battery swapping has better economy under different recharge distances.•Battery swapping is the most cost-effective when station utilization high than 43%.•Battery and traffic density improvement will further benefit for system economy.