EV Trucks are Set to Hit the Road

There is no doubt that the freight trucking industry is in the midst of a transition to electric vehicles, however, it will be the shorter-haul electric vehicles that are adopted first before concepts like the Tesla Semi travel greater distances on interstate highways.

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The fact that EV truck batteries have limits in terms of their mileage range makes them the best choice for drayage transportation or the movement of goods over short distances as a result of their limited mileage range. Trucking companies are making an effort to develop short-haul EV trucks to put them to use at ports and logistics facilities that deal with intermodal traffic.

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The Schneider Group is a truckload, intermodal, and logistics service provider, which announced back in 2021 its plans to introduce a fleet of battery-electric trucks (BEVs), and the BEVs have now arrived at a Southern California port.

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The Schneider CEO Mark Rourke intends that the company will run those in and out of railheads for intermodal customers, and so we will start with five this month, then we will be able to take up to about a hundred of those by the end of the year,” Rourke told Trade Algo on Wednesday.

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Even though truckload volumes dropped last year, companies such as Schneider continue to invest in EV trucking because of the long-term benefits which they provide, both economically and environmentally, as well as the increasing pressure that has been placed on states to adopt electric vehicles.

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By 2024, the California Air Resources Board will require truck manufacturers to begin phasing in heavy-duty electric vehicles (EVs) for short-haul drayage fleets, and all zero-emission short-haul drayage fleets will be in operation by 2035. There is also evidence that trucks are the most common source of vehicle-produced air pollution, as they emit 70% of the state's smog-forming gases and 80% of the state's carcinogenic diesel pollutants, according to the agency.

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It is no surprise at all that Schneider will launch its first fleet of zero-emission vehicles in the state, but Schneider knows that it has a long way to go when it comes to long-haul trucks.

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“The process is going to take some time. At the moment the range of the car is about 200 to 240 miles, depending on the terrain in which it is used. I think it's going to be a while before battery electric trucks become available, but there are other alternative fuels, such as hydrogen, that may get us there sooner with still providing zero emissions, but it's going to take a little bit of time," Rourke said.

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One of the biggest challenges that the trucking industry has to deal with as it looks to expand the use of electric trucks is how they navigate long-haul shipping. The San Francisco startup TeraWatt Infrastructure announced last year that it was developing the first network of electric vehicle-charging centers for heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks along Interstate 10, which runs from Long Beach, California, to El Paso, Texas, along a 500-mile stretch.

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As part of the Department of Transportation's EV-charging station plans that cover approximately 75,000 miles of highways across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, the Department of Transportation approved the plans in September. Additionally, the states have access to more than $1.5 billion in funding that will help build the chargers.

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The first batch of Tesla's production Semi trucks was delivered to PepsiCo Frito Lay in December, which is Tesla's first customer to receive and use the trucks. Even though Tesla has not revealed how many trucks it plans to produce this year, it claims that the company's fast-charging system as well as its battery can allow a Tesla truck to travel 500 miles on a single charge.

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There are only about 4% of vehicles in the United States are medium or heavy trucks, but these vehicles consume more fuel than any other vehicle on the highways and produce nearly 30% of the greenhouse gases on the highways, according to the Department of Energy, despite their larger size and longer travel distances.

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The Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, said at a company event held in December that while the number of semi trucks may seem small but because of their size, weight, and the fact that they are driven around the clock, they represent a large portion of harmful vehicle emissions.

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Volvo and Nikola Corporation, like Schneider, are focusing their efforts on two of the country's busiest ports, the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles, due to the current range restrictions of electric trucks. As of October last year, a subsidiary of shipping giant Maersk, Performance Team, began deploying Volvo short-haul electric trucks in Southern California for warehouses and distribution facilities.

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In contrast, Amazon and Rivian Automotive, as well as General Motors' subsidiary BrightDrop, are working together to transition last-mile delivery trucks from trucks to electric vehicles as part of Amazon's EV transition. Towards the end of 2040, California's new mandate will require all last-mile trucks to be zero-emissions by law.

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The goal of these electric trucks is not only to reduce the number of carbon emissions but also to save the trucking companies money, regardless of how they are deployed to lower carbon emissions. Cal Matters, a non-profit newsgroup, has found that the total cost of buying and operating an electric semi-truck can range from $765,000 to $1.1 million, while the cost of a gas or diesel truck can range from $919,000 to $1.2 million.

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Rourke does not seem concerned about the fact that the shift to EVs is taking place amid a more cautious economic climate.

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“There is no doubt that the freight economy is usually on the front end of both the ups and downs of the economic cycle. Right now, I believe that it is pretty stable... I think that we have not seen much of a drop-off season like we normally see in the first quarter of each year. As a result, I am likely to be more optimistic than pessimistic at this point," Rourke said. However, it is still too early to tell.