Last week, as reported by Reuters, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has “withdrawn its request for a federal waiver to require commercial truckers to transition to zero-emissions vehicles, preempting an expected denial from the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.” Here are some excerpts from the article:
California’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule aimed to set timelines for operators of trucks carrying everything from U.S. mail and UPS packages to 40-foot containers of goods and other cargo, to switch to zero-emissions vehicles such as those powered by electric batteries.
CARB’s decision to withdraw the EPA waiver request for its clean truck rule is certain to resonate beyond California.Nearly a dozen other states, including New York, New Jersey and Washington, have adopted the more aggressive trucking standards. Beyond that, truck makers already are subject to a separate California rule requiring them to sell more zero-emission trucks.
The Specialty Equipment Market Association, representing more than 7,000 businesses nationwide in the automotive aftermarket industry, praised the announcement saying California’s plan would “have crippled interstate commerce by implementing harmful EV mandates on the trucking fleets.”
This may not be pulling the plug on electric trucks completely, but it’s certainly pumping the brakes on mandating their deployment.
As I wrote in April 2023 in “Electric Freight Trucks: Not Happening Anytime Soon for Long-Haul Moves,” there are many challenges associated with electric, battery-powered freight trucks. The biggest one is the simple, inconvenient truth that our electric grid can’t support them.
According to research conducted by The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), published in December 2022, “Domestic long-haul trucking would use more than 10 percent of the electricity generated in the country today [if they were electric battery trucks] – while an all-electric U.S. vehicle fleet would use more than 40 percent. Some individual states would need to generate as much as 60 percent more electricity than is presently produced.”
In an April 2023 Indago survey on “The Future of Truck Transportation,” a supply chain executive member said the following about this constraint:
“I believe the issue [that needs attention] is the ability for electricity providers/utility companies to [provide the amount of electricity] needed to support and sustain a fleet. Some areas will not have an issue [providing the necessary] infrastructure, others will face difficulties. I am also worried about certain geographies (e.g., Northeast USA) possibly not allowing fleets to charge during ‘peak consumer’ hours in the spring/summer. The risk of rolling blackouts or brownouts might require utility companies to shut down the power supply to large-scale users (i.e., fleet charging centers) during these times, which would affect a company’s transportation operations.”
In contrast, Europe continues to push forward with more stringent CO2 emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles. On May 13, 2024, the Council of the European Union ratified revised emissions standards. Per the International Council on Clean Transportation, “The original CO2 standards required the emissions from most new trucks to be 15% lower by 2025 and 30% lower by 2030 than the 2019 reporting period. The revised standards maintain the CO2 reduction target of 15% for 2025 and raise the 2030 target to 45% while introducing a 65% reduction target for 2035 and a 90% target for 2040.”
Will the changing political winds in Europe lead to a rethink of these emission standards? We’ll have to wait and see.
Back to the U.S: The reality that many politicians ignore or refuse to acknowledge is that until we solve the electrical grid constraints, especially with the growing demand for electricity from Artificial Intelligence applications, completely replacing diesel-powered freight trucks with battery-powered electric ones cannot happen, unless you’re willing to subject the population to blackouts and brownouts. That’s the hard truth, whether you like it or not.
For now, the “sweet spot” for using electric trucks remains last-mile delivery and short-haul moves, particularly at ports and intermodal facilities.
What do you think? Post a comment and share your perspective.
For related commentary, please read “Do We Have Enough Electricity To Power The Future Of Supply Chains?” and “A Strategy For Charging Electric Freight Trucks.”
