USA – At last year’s ACT Expo in Las Vegas, Truck & Bus Builder met for the first time with Range Energy to learn more about its “electric trailer platform”. This year’s show provided the opportunity for a business update after two major announcements: the appointment of a new chief executive officer, Jon Foster, and a supply agreement with ZF Group for its ‘AxTrax 2’ e-axles. I spoke with founder Ali Javidan – now chief technology officer – and Foster about what the company hopes to achieve in the next five years.

Based in Mountain View, California, Range Energy’s goal is to make semi-trailers more energy efficient, more sustainable, and easier and safer to drive. By installing an electric drive system onto the axle and connecting it to a battery pack, the operator can recapture energy from braking and use it for a range of support functions: at its stand at ACT Expo 2025, Range presented a trailer with a refrigeration unit that can be powered by recuperated energy. Range’s system not only electrifies the semi-trailer, but it also makes it smarter. Onboard software can sense how hard the tractor is pulling on the trailer and provide support from the electric axle, providing a sense of “weightlessness” even while pulling a fully-laden trailer. In the system that Range showcased last year, the sensors were located in the kingpin; since then, the company has replaced this with a more distributed sensor system.