Australian battery electric heavy truck startup, Janus Electric is licking its wounds after a devastating fire at its headquarters at Berkeley Vale on the NSW Central Coast last week, which destroyed one of the company’s prototypes and damaged another.
The company says it is looking into the causes of the fire and has mounted a full internal investigation after the battery fire that claimed valuable prototype.
The Kenworth T403 truck, which was the first truck that Janus had converted to an electric driveline along with its trademark swap out/swap in batteries, was totally destroyed in the fire, while anther Kenworth T610 glider, which was parked close to the prototype truck.
The truck fire occurred at Janus Electric’s Berkeley Vale headquarters along the New South Wales Central Coast on July 14.
The fire was brought under control by the local fire brigade and general manager of Janus, Lex Forsyth said that from initial investigations it is suspected that the fire was caused by an engineering challenge which he says has been since engineered out of the company’s latest prototypes.
“It is fortunate that the impact of the fire has caused minimal disruption in hitting our milestones as the Kenworth T403 was the first in kind never to be repeated prototype.”
The Janus Kenworth T403 was the first truck to be fitted with the original Janus interchangeable battery system used the original front-loading battery design more than two years ago.
It was due to be changed to the company’s side-load system by the end of next month , with the new battery pack design using a chassis-mounted side mount design, with the battery packs attached to the chassis where the fuel tanks are mounted on normal diesel trucks.
“The technology used has been incrementally developed and has progressed exponentially since its inception,” Forsyth said.
“Any issues encountered during construction of the prototype have been engineered out and are not being utilised in our current conversions,” Forsyth added.
