An electric truck fleet can refuel two ways: overnight or shift depot charging, or automated battery swap in 5-6 minutes. The Dongfeng TZ5E 8x4 dump truck carries a 424 kWh CATL LFP pack that charges 20-80 percent in about 65 minutes on a 360 kW DC unit, or swaps a pack in 5-6 minutes at a swap station. The right model depends on daily kilometres, shift pattern and how much capex you can put into the yard. This guide compares the economics for dumps, mixers and cargo fleets with a station capex table and utilization thresholds.
Depot charging spreads energy cost across an off-peak window and needs only chargers, cabling and a transformer upgrade. For a fleet running 200-250 km per shift, a 360 kW DC unit or a bank of 120 kW wallboxes covers the pack overnight. Energy is about $0.10 per km; the hardware for one truck is roughly $25,000-$40,000 including civil works, and it scales linearly as you add trucks.
Swap stations hold a pool of packs and exchange a depleted one in 5-6 minutes, removing range anxiety on multi-shift or 300 km plus loops. Capex is higher: a single-bay automated station runs $400,000-$700,000, and a shared pool means you buy roughly 1.2-1.5 packs per truck in circulation. The payback comes from utilisation: a truck that would otherwise sit 60-90 minutes per shift on a charger earns that time back as revenue.
| Option | Capex per truck | Energy $/km | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depot DC 360 kW | $25,000-$40,000 | $0.10 | Single shift, under 250 km |
| Overnight wallbox bank | $15,000-$25,000 | $0.09 | Predictable overnight |
| Swap station (shared) | $130,000-$230,000 | $0.11 | Multi-shift, 300 km plus |
| Mixed depot plus swap | Blended | Blended | Growing fleet |
Use a simple rule. If a truck runs one shift under 250 km and returns to a depot nightly, depot charging wins on cost every time. If a truck runs two shifts, or a single shift over 300 km, or you cannot extend the shift with a 60-90 minute charge window, battery swap pays for itself once you run four or more trucks through one station. Below that, the swap capex sits idle.
Most importers start with depot charging for the predictable half of the fleet and add one swap station when utilisation crosses the threshold. The TZ5E dump works in both modes because the pack is swap-ready from the factory, so you are not locked into one refueling model. Keep chargers as the baseline and treat swap as a capacity add-on.
Uzbekistan's Navoi and Tashkent construction corridors are long and the grid can be constrained away from the capital, which makes a depot-plus-swap mix attractive for 8x4 dumps on remote sites. Review electric trucks in Uzbekistan for grid and site-power planning.
The model page for the Dongfeng TZ5E electric dump truck carries the full 424 kWh pack spec, GVW 40 t rating and swap-station interface details for your engineering team.
A 20-truck dump fleet on depot charging needs about 20 x 360 kW bays or 40 x 180 kW wallboxes, a 2.5-4 MVA transformer and cable rated for the peak. Layout the bays in two rows with a 4 metre aisle, place the switchgear at the row centre to equalise cable length, and keep the swap bay (if any) at the exit so a swapped truck leaves without crossing chargers. Pour a reinforced slab for the cable trays and a 1 percent fall so rainwater drains away from the couplers. Budget $25,000-$40,000 per truck for the electrical build, plus $50,000-$120,000 for the transformer upgrade depending on the local utility and the distance to the nearest substation.
A swap station needs a 15 x 30 metre footprint, a 200-400 kVA supply for the handling gear, and a pack store sized for 1.2-1.5 packs per truck in circulation. Site it where trucks already converge, not at the quarry edge, so the round trip to swap stays under 20 km. The handling robot exchanges a 424 kWh pack in 5-6 minutes; the depleted pack drops into the cooled store and charges on off-peak power. A single bay serves four to eight trucks per shift, which is the utilisation threshold that makes the $400,000-$700,000 capex pay back through recovered truck hours.
Depot charging from a clean grid or solar also opens low-emission-zone access and carbon credits that swap alone may not claim, because the energy source is metered at the depot. In Uzbekistan, where the grid mix is shifting, fleets that charge overnight on off-peak tariffs report 20-30 percent lower CO2 per tonne-km than diesel, a line item that matters for export-oriented miners with Scope 3 reporting. Pair the charging choice with the market page incentives before signing, because a grant can flip the whole payback.
Start month one with depot charging for the first ten trucks and meter every bay. At month four, when daily kilometres show two-shift or 300 km plus loops on four or more units, add one swap bay. Keep the depot as baseline so a swap outage never strands a truck. Review the data quarterly; if utilisation on the swap bay stays below 60 percent, hold fleet size rather than add a second bay. This phased path keeps capex matched to proof, not to a forecast, and protects the FOB you committed at import.
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Grid outage | Genset or swap backup on site |
| Bay fault | Spare module, trained electrician per shift |
| Pack mismatch | Standardised swap-ready pack across fleet |
| Peak demand charge | Buffer or staggered shifts |
Maintain the chargers on a 6-month infrared scan of the connections and a yearly torque check, because a loose coupler is the most common cause of a slow bay. Train one electrician per shift on the DC safety disconnect so a fault clears in minutes, not hours, and keep a spare module on the shelf so a failed bay is swapped, not repaired in place during a live shift.
Every month a diesel dump runs instead of a charged or swapped TZ5E is a month of $0.26 per km lost to fuel and a month of DPF and turbo risk accruing. At 40,000 km a year that is about $10,000 a truck in fuel alone, plus the downtime a failed turbo costs on a remote Uzbek site where the nearest turbo is a freight flight away. Depot charging pays back in under two years even before the swap case; the swap case just adds uptime once loops exceed 300 km. The cheapest path is to start charging now and add swap when the data proves the trucks are busy enough to need it, because the capex then matches a proven load rather than a forecast.
For most importers the answer is not "swap versus depot" but "depot first, swap when busy". The TZ5E is swap-ready from the factory, so the choice is reversible: you never lock the fleet into one refueling model, and you never strand a truck because the other option still works. Keep the depot as the baseline contract with the utility, treat the swap bay as a capacity add-on, and revisit the utilisation number every quarter. A fleet that grows from ten to thirty trucks typically crosses the four-truck swap threshold around month six, at which point the second refueling mode pays for itself from recovered truck hours alone.
Ready to electrify your fleet? Contact Shaanxi Fenghan Trading — authorized Dongfeng EV truck exporter. WhatsApp: +86 153 1943 1311 | Email: sales@fenghan-trade.com | dongfengevtrucks.com
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