The little Aussie battler taking on Tesla, one truck at a time

October 11, 2026 — 5:00am

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Ben Hutt is the CEO of the Central Coast’s Janus Electric, which is the global pioneer of replacing the engines of diesel trucks with complete electrical systems and batteries.

Fitz: Ben, in this week when Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will soon be producing 50,000 electric trucks annually, people have been telling me that your mob is well ahead of the game and successfully pioneering the conversion of diesel trucks to electric. Tell me the “creation story”?

BH: The business was founded at the turn of this decade by a gentleman called Lex Forsyth. His family has been in trucking in Australia for 110 years. He built and sold two haulage businesses and an autonomous diesel refuelling station in Queensland, and he realised electric trucks can do the job of a diesel truck in a way that’s obviously much more beneficial for the environment and cheaper in many cases.

Fitz: So he and his engineers rip out the diesel engine and work out the way to replace it with electrical systems and batteries in a way that is economical?

BH: Yes. It became economical five years ago, and three years ago we started converting these trucks commercially to have 28 of these Janus trucks driving around different parts of the country, in a wide range of freight tasks, including mining, cement, forestry, food, and delivering white goods. These are effectively 28 “pilot” trucks, proving that they could be hugely financially beneficial to the companies that invest in transitioning from diesel to electric.

Fitz: And the pilots proved they could do the work?

BH: They all have slightly different hardware and are in use in a range of freight tasks, and they formed a good basis for learning. And so when I became CEO in January this year, I said, “All right, what have we learnt with all these pilots? What’s gone well? What’s gone wrong? If we were to standardise the product now, what do we need to do?” So we have now standardised a family of products and a supply chain that’s set up to serve customers all around the world. We’re now in the scaling-up phase. If I use Tesla as a parallel, I’d say we are where adoption of passenger electric vehicles was when Tesla just released the first 200 Model S. We’re right at the beginning of the widespread adoption of heavy electric trucks, and certainly in our customer base and pipeline, people now realise that it’s not just nice to have – the electric truck is actually better. It’s much cheaper to do most types of freight tasks.

Fitz: What are the relevant numbers in what you’re offering?

BH: Instead of rebuilding the engine when they wear out for $150,000 or buying a new diesel truck for $350,000-$500,000 – or eventually a new electric truck for........

© The Sydney Morning Herald