Electric trucks — whether they are battery-powered or rely on hydrogen and fuel cells — are faced with the double challenge of high cost and operational limitations inhibiting their adoption. These are some of the findings in a new report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), titled Closing the Trucking Gaps: Priorities for the Department of Energy’s RD&D Portfolio.
Medium- and heavy-duty trucks may make up only 5 percent of the vehicles on the road, but account for 30 percent of the emissions coming from road transportation, according to the report, highlighting the quick gains in greenhouse gas reductions that can come from electrifying this transportation sector.
However, a battery-electric truck can have a total cost of ownership more than twice the price of a diesel-powered truck, the report concluded, with a range of only a fraction of the distance of a diesel truck with a 120-gallon fuel tank. It should be noted, however, that advances in technology will likely lead to reduced costs and more range.
California and some other states are already moving forward with adopting new rules to require the transition of truck fleets to zero-emission vehicles, with drayage fleets serving large ports to be fully electric by 2035.
“Upfront costs are major concerns,” said Hoyu Chong, the author of the ITIF report. “Even if the overall total cost of ownership is lower — which is not true today in most use cases — due to lower operational and maintenance costs, financing the higher upfront costs could be a big hurdle to less capitalized buyers.
“If switching to BEV [battery-electric vehicle] trucks [is] more expensive, companies would simply refrain from switching due to absent regulations, or they would pass the higher costs to the downstream part of the supply chain and ultimately to consumers,” Chong added in an email.
The report noted that some use cases — like local or regional trucking — could be reasonably served by electric trucks because of the shorter driving range, as well as access to charging. Major charging infrastructure projects are underway in California to serve heavy-duty trucks when they become more common. Forum Mobility is developing a facility in the California Bay Area to offer both “dwell charging,” which is described as slower overnight charging, and “opportunity charging,” which is seen as a midday rapid charge.
“There’s plenty of demand. The state is mandating the demand. And it’s incumbent on infrastructure providers like us to put it in the ground,” said Matt LeDucq, CEO of Forum Mobility.
Similarly, in 2021, the California South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) launched the Joint Electric Truck Scaling Initiative (JETSI) pilot project to develop heavy-duty vehicle charging in Southern California. The project includes the deployment of 100 heavy-duty electric trucks, 38 fast chargers as well as a network of solar power generation, battery storage and more.
“We wanted to kind of test, what is this feasibility or use case at scale,” said Patricia Kwon, program supervisor for technology demonstration with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, speaking on a panel at the recent Forth Road Map conference in Portland, Ore.
“We wanted to prove, can you deploy 50 trucks, at two fleets, at scale, with the charging infrastructure, the microgrid, the upgrades that are going to be required. It’s not easy. It has taken a long time,” she added.
Drayage trucks, said Chong at ITIF, would be great use cases served by BEV technology. "The main issues with electric trucks are cost and range. While costs could remain a concern, drayage trucks are less exposed to the range issue than other heavy-duty trucks due to the short and local traveling distance,” she said.
The lion’s share of state and federal incentives are still heavily focused on electrifying the light-duty vehicle market — personal cars and trucks — and developing the charging infrastructure to support it. This sector still generates two-thirds of transportation emissions in California, the state with the largest share of EVs.
"Obviously, transitioning the LDV [light-duty vehicle] segment to ZEV [zero-emission vehicle] would have significant impacts,” Chong pointed out. “The main difference, however, is that some of these emissions could be avoided or mitigated by using alternative modes of transportation, like public transit or active transportation. But no such substitutes to heavy-duty trucks really exist.”
