Shifting things up a gear at Peugeot
October 1st 2006

Hawker Motive Power brand WF200 high performance batteries from EnerSys have been fitted to the fleet of electric trucks at the Peugeot Parts distribution centre in Coventry, supporting Peugeot's move from two to three shifts at the site.

A three-high, 165-slot battery charging bay, using Powertech high frequency (HF) chargers, with a semi automated rising-platform change cart and 'smart' battery call-forward system has also been fitted.

The new regime has brought increased flexibility and truck uptime and ensures that maximum cycle time is extracted from all batteries as well as freeing up a large amount of space in the warehouse.

Prior to the switch, trucks were parked up at the end of the working day and their batteries put on charge, but the new round-the clock operation left no time for batteries to receive full charges. Peugeot therefore moved to changing batteries instead of charging them, with each truck now allocated two batteries.

Hawker's new three-tier battery charging installation occupies less than a quarter of the space previously taken up by the 'park and charge' operation.

Additionally, the HF chargers offer outstanding energy efficiency, as much as 20% higher than 50Hz chargers.

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