Berlin, June 23, 2026 – As part of the “Transportation in Charge” research project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Materials Research (IFAM), together with partners from the research and industry sectors, has developed tools for the economic and technical evaluation of charging infrastructure for electric trucks in industrial parks and freight hubs. As part of this project, PSI Software SE has developed software tools for integrating transport logistics and charging management, as well as a cloud-based demonstrator.
In a field test, approximately 210 available electric commercial vehicles (e-trucks) and the charging infrastructure were tested and evaluated to determine their practical suitability for various logistics tasks. The field test was intended to help design the charging infrastructure in industrial parks to enable local businesses to jointly use a cost-effective and demand-driven charging solution for e-trucks.
At the same time, an analysis was conducted to determine the long-term energy demands resulting from the transformation of vehicle fleets across entire industrial parks, enabling better long-term planning of grid capacity.
As software partner, PSI implemented a comprehensive technical solution for integrating transport logistics and charging management and developed a cloud-based platform to exchange real-time data relevant to planning. This allows charging and transport planning to be optimally coordinated based on up-to-date information from vehicle telematics, traffic, weather, charging points, and parking spaces, as well as available charging capacities. In addition, PSI designed a cloud-based demonstrator based on the PSItms transport management system and the CCTV module for image data analysis.
In summary, the study provides important new insights into the potential of electric mobility in freight transport and demonstrates, among other things, that operating electric truck fleets is already possible today despite ongoing challenges, such as charging infrastructure and acquisition costs.
The three-year research project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) and the Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport (BMDV), was successfully completed in June 2026. The participating partners were Fraunhofer IFAM, from RWTH Aachen University the Institute for Urban Planning and Urban Transport (ISB), the Human-Computer Interaction Center (HCIC), and the Institute for Electrical Systems and Networks, Digitalization, and Energy Economics (IAEW), as well as the industry partners PSI Software SE, Behrens-Wöhlk GmbH & Co. KG, and Rhenus Home Delivery GmbH.
The PSI Group develops software products for optimizing the flow of energy and materials for utilities and industry. As an independent software producer with more than 2,300 employees, PSI has been a technology leader since 1969 for process control systems that ensure sustainable energy supply, production and logistics by combining AI methods with industrially proven optimization methods. The innovative industry products can be operated on-premises or in the cloud.
