Looking ahead to electric trucks on UK roads
While the adoption of battery-powered vans is gaining momentum in the UK, the future of electric trucks is less clear, according to Gary Dodsworth, UK director at Rhenus UK.
The road towards full electrification of both light and heavy commercial vehicles is far from straight. Granted, businesses such as IKEA and UPS are already rolling out EV van fleets across the UK, and Rhenus is using battery-powered vans to fulfil home deliveries in Germany – but the case for HGVs is still far from settled.
While the impact of London’s ultra-low emission zone is still filtering through the transport sector, we think it will be infrastructure and technology challenges, not legislation, that will ultimately determine the fate of long-range electric HGVs. Most transport experts think the market is not ready to embrace pure EV trucks here in the UK.
The biggest challenge for EV trucks will be the development of cost effective, lightweight batteries with the required public charging infrastructure to support them. For the market to ever switch to full electric, batteries will need to deliver the equivalent range and payload capacity of a conventional tractor unit, and this will require battery developers to make enormous strides over the next few years. Beyond this, it will require logistics companies to install large rapid charging points at depots.
Is the Semi the full ticket?
While the future of the EV truck in the UK looks unclear, things are looking brighter over in the USA. Tesla’s aspiration to lead the pack when it comes to e-trucks with its new Semi looks undaunted. However, doubts remain.
With a claimed range of up to 600 miles, the Semi has gained huge amounts of press coverage, with iconic chairman Elon Musk claiming it would be “the safest, most comfortable truck ever.”
Costing anywhere between £110,000 and £140,000 for the longer-range version, it is expected that the first production models of the Semi will be seen in 2020. Granted, some big-name US fleets such as PepsiCo, Sysco and WalMart have placed orders, but there are plenty of detractors to Musk’s dream.
One is Daimler, which owns commercial truck brands like Mercedes-Benz Trucks and Freightliner – and has several electric truck projects of its own.
While most of these don’t compete head on with the Tesla Semi, which is a full capacity class 8 truck, they still have something in the same segment: the eCascadia, an all-electric version of their flagship truck.
Daimler is already delivering a few units to some early customers and it plans to bring it to volume production in 2021 – a year or so after Tesla Semi.
President and CEO of Daimler Trucks in North America, Roger Nielsen, made some interesting comments about the Semi when speaking at American Trucking Associations’ conference last year.
In response to a question about a possible delay of deliveries of Tesla’s new EV truck he said it was not just a race to market. “The best battery solution is going to win. It’s all about energy consumption.”
Daimler has never released energy consumption figures for its eCascadia, but in terms of overall range, it is significantly falling behind the Tesla Semi: 250 miles vs 500 miles on a single charge.
But the German vehicle manufacturer has also expressed doubts about Tesla’s ability to deliver on the range. The company previously said that if the claims Tesla is making about its electric Semi truck are true, they are “breaking the laws of physics”.
Alternatives to electricity
Clearly, while EV trucks are grabbing headlines, this technology is not the only game in town. Engineers from Horiba Mira, the automotive engineering and development consultancy, think there will always be a place for Euro VI diesel-powered trucks, particularly those carrying heavy loads on long journeys.
While electricity seems to be gaining wide acceptance for urban vans, gas-power seems to offer a viable way ahead for trucks that don’t undertake city deliveries. The argument goes that trucks fuelled with gas have cleaner characteristics than those powered by diesel, and the upfront cost of producing gas-fuelled trucks is cheaper than diesel.
Moreover, we think that dual-fuelling is another option that may well become more popular for long-distance fleets.
However, given that hydrogen does not exist naturally in a readily available gaseous form and has to be manufactured, there are question marks around whether or not it would be possible to create enough hydrogen for dual fuelling to become commercially viable.
Looking further ahead, we should never discount hydrogen as a single fuel source. After all, it is currently used to power buses in Aberdeen, while the Nikola Motor Company, a Utah-based manufacturer pioneering the technology in commercial fleets, claims it will create the largest hydrogen network in the world, which it says will span 2,000 miles.
Could hydrogen be a viable alternative for UK fleets, too? We’re not convinced. While it could be a viable fuel source for bus fleet that use specific routes, the challenges of infrastructure, refuelling and investment make it more attractive to public transport and refuse trucks.
