2023-10-06 11:42:00
Just as households will have to give up gas sooner or later, transport companies will have to say goodbye to diesel. That is a drastic multi-year plan in an industry where diesel oil flows through the veins. But for the first time, progress is starting to be made in the electrification of the truck fleet, reports ING Research.
This year, the Netherlands will pass the first milestone of a thousand e-trucks on the road, a more than threefold increase compared to 2022. This ‘acceleration’ is mainly due to subsidy incentives and because the production of e-trucks has restarted. Truck manufacturing has long suffered from a lack of parts and raw materials as a result of the corona pandemic, but now series production of electric trucks can also be increased.
At the same time, there is still a long way to go before the flames die out in the transport sector. Smaller transport operators in particular are struggling, according to the vision report Trucks en Trailers from ING Research once morest the high costs of those trucks and the still inadequate charging infrastructure. However, they will also have to believe it, because the agreement with regarding thirty Dutch cities is that from 2025 a diesel truck will no longer be allowed into the city center.
New regulations
By 2030, city centers may only be supplied with zero-emission trucks. The agreement is that there should be around 12,000 of them on the road that year. “We are fully committed to it,” says Rob Aarse, sustainability advisor at the Transport and Logistics Netherlands (TLN) trade association. “Entrepreneurs anticipate new regulations and take a closer look at their fleet. And they look at the charging options with the local network administrator,” says Aarse.
According to TLN, a lot still needs to be done before all trucks run on batteries. “So there are now regarding a thousand e-trucks, a small share of a fleet of at least 140,000 trucks that still run on diesel.” According to ING Research, large companies are taking the lead in the transition to electric charging and unloading. Supermarkets because of the aforementioned ‘city center scheme’ and also construction companies because of nitrogen restrictions. In addition, they are required to report on CO2emissions.
However, these companies also face high costs. ‘In practice, larger retailers and their transporters in particular want to quickly switch to electric, but not all clients want to pay extra for this. There are also companies that are still leaning towards diesels for the time being and are opting for a postponement,” ING Research notes.
Three times more expensive
A large electric truck is three times more expensive than a truck that runs on diesel, says Jan Schouten, energy transition manager at Volvo Trucks Netherlands. “Then you have to think of at least three hundred thousand euros plus the additional costs for the charging infrastructure.” Technically, major steps have been made, Schouten knows: “We can supply an electric variant for 90 percent of diesel trucks. One in ten newly sold trucks is now electric. But they are a lot heavier and the range remains a challenge.”
An electric truck can travel approximately 420 km on a single battery charge. Because journeys from the Netherlands are becoming increasingly shorter, 80 percent of the distances are now a maximum of 150 kilometers and therefore within reach of electric trucks.
According to ING Research, economic conditions may still be the most important obstacle for the coming period. The major bank sees staff problems, sharply increased interest rates and persistently higher prices for new trucks and trailers. ING expects that registrations of new trucks will decline by 12 percent in 2024, ‘but not that the market will collapse’. The upcoming truck tax on CO2emissions in 2026 and ambitious CO2reduction obligations for manufacturers might accelerate the growth of e-trucks on the road, says ING Research.
Also read:
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