Readers of Truck & Bus Builder will be accustomed by now to news stories reporting the demise of yet another electric vehicle startup. Particularly in Britain and in the USA, several new companies in receipt of millions of dollars of investors’ money – either through venture capital funding rounds or the stock market – have faltered in the past year, reducing their business activities to a fraction of their original scope or ceasing to trade altogether. Yet, in late 2024, while all of this was going on, a small British firm successfully raised a sum of GBP17.3m from investors who could justifiably have refused to cough up a single penny towards yet another electric vehicle proposition. Bucking the trend, Sunswap Ltd is showing that a new entrant can bring out a product that is economically as well as environmentally sustainable.

The ten ‘Endurance’ TRUs were the first to be produced at the company’s new headquarters and production facility in Leatherhead.

TIP is trialling an electric regen axle system – developed jointly by Thermo King Europe and BPW – with a refrigerated semi-trailer in Britain.

Prior to his appointment, Bryant was CEO and Head of Manufacturing for venture capital firm BGF Investment Management Ltd, or the “Business Growth Fund”, established in 2011 by major British banks.

Truck & Bus Builder learned that Sunswap’s marketing efforts are currently focused on the Benelux countries.

Sunswap will use the money to support the further development, production, and commercialisation of its technology: solar panels mounted on the roof of a reefer trailer to supply energy to the refrigeration unit, thus reducing the fuel consumption of the whole truck-trailer combination.

The logistics firm is trialling Sunswap's TRU, called 'The Endurance', which is built to derive 65-80% of its required running power from solar panels mounted on the roof of the trailer.