HVIA Visits Van Eck Trailers In The Netherlands To Review Powered Dolly Prototype

Following an impressive line-up of powered axle and powered trailer solutions at IAA in Hannover, HVIA’s Chief Technical Officer Adam Ritzinger arranged a visit to Van Eck Trailers, a European manufacturer at the forefront of trailer innovation and decarbonisation.

Van Eck is a Dutch family business set up in 1912, and currently employs 150 staff. Its focus is a consistent innovation strategy to increase freight payload capacity and reduce CO2 emissions from transport operations.

That focus was highlighted in Van Eck’s participation in the European Union funded ‘Aeroflex’ research project – Aerodynamic and Flexible Trucks for Next Generation of Long Distance Road Transport.

Part of Van Eck’s contribution was the development of a prototype powered dolly that featured an on-board battery, an electrically driven axle, and a separately steered axle, which enabled the dolly to be driven by remote control as well as providing tractive power to the combination while in motion.

Adam visited Van Eck Trailers with HVIA Board Director Robert Smedley, and were hosted by Aykut Çağlayan, from Van Eck’s Research And Development Engineering team. Aykut presented the powered dolly prototype, and the team discussed a wide range of topics including its design, packaging challenges, the control system, results, and next steps for the prototype.

“What we saw at Van Eck was an impressive display of engineering design and innovation in action, that could offer an interesting avenue for transport decarbonisation in Australia”, said Adam. “Given the engineering expertise that exists on our shores, similar solutions could be readily developed by HVIA members for our local market, once HVIA’s work in solving the regulatory roadblocks progresses”, he added.

A video of the dolly in action is available here

Information on the Aeroflex project is available here

The Van Eck Trailers website address is here

Adam and Rob would like to thank Aykut and the Van Eck team for welcoming them to their site, and for the excellent tour and technology presentation.