Yesterday, Thursday, the European Parliament took the decision to ban the sale of vehicles that run on diesel or petrol from 2035. This measure applies to cars, but not (yet) to trucks.
However, some municipalities have already started to electrify their garbage trucks, this is the case of Namur. A third of the town’s garbage truck fleet will be electric within five years.
Municipal trucks are obviously not the only ones to have to adapt to reduce their consumption. From 2025, heavy goods vehicles will have to reduce their CO2 emissions by 15%, a threshold which will rise to 30% in 2030.
Yves Toussaint is an expert in vehicle electrification. For him, school buses and garbage trucks”who are required to make a route well known in advance and relatively reasonable in terms of mileage”are “candidates to go electric”.
But from there to making all trucks electric, there is a step that Yves Toussaint will not cross. “Electrifying these battery-powered vehicles would mean huge battery losses. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It’s heavy, it’s expensive. The metals to make these battery packs are likely to explode in cost.”
Today, a hydrogen truck costs around 600,000 euros, which is double that of a traditional truck. For an electric truck, the bill is multiplied by four.
