Big rigs, box trucks, and buses are part of our lives and economies. Almost everything we buy is carried by trucks, which move billions of tons of goods each year. School buses that bring kids to school, city buses that serve commuters, garbage and recycling trucks that keep streets clean, 18-wheelers that haul goods: these are all classified as medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. As crucial as these vehicles are, and as important as the goods and services they supply are, they also bring high levels of air pollution that endanger people’s health and contribute to climate change.
But heavy-duty vehicles can be cleaned up. In a new report, Sam Wilson, a senior analyst at UCS, tracks the dramatic growth of electric trucks and buses and the big benefits to be gained from electrification. Wilson previously worked for the state of Washington to develop and analyze policies related to air quality and climate change—and he’s excited about the rapid changes he’s seeing in the trucking industry.
AAS: Your new report, Ready for Work 2.0, looks at the prospects for electrifying medium- and heavy-duty trucks. Why focus on trucks?
When we think of transportation pollution, people often think, understandably, about the millions of passenger cars out there on the road. However, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles like commercial trucks, vans, and buses, pollute at far greater rates than cars. These vehicles make up just over 1 in 10 of the vehicles on our roads but emit around half of the fine particulate and nitrogen oxide pollution among on-road vehicles. Trucks are the largest source of smog-forming pollution nationwide, and often the largest contributor to local air quality issues and related illnesses, especially in areas adjacent to highways, industrial corridors, ports, and warehouses.
Every year, exposure to transportation pollution is responsible for around 10,000 premature deaths in the US—and among all vehicle types, diesel-powered trucks have the most severe impact. Since 1990, climate-warming emissions from trucks have grown around 80%—a rate far greater increase than most other on-road vehicles. Today, trucks are responsible for around one-third of the climate-warming emissions from the transportation sector.
Electric trucks, however, don’t create any tailpipe emissions. So electrifying trucks is the surest way to reduce the negative impacts they have on public health and the environment. We need to electrify our whole transportation system, but making sure that heavy-duty vehicles are part of this transition is going to make a huge difference.
AAS: How feasible is it to electrify truck fleets? Are there big impediments to the transition you talk about in this report?
The technology to enable widescale electrification has grown at impressive rates over a short amount of time, as our new report shows. Over the past few years, new registrations of electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicles have grown rapidly: there are more than 70 different models of zero-emission trucks, vans, and buses operating on our roads today.
This growth is excellent news, but electric trucks still represent a small share of new vehicles registered each year, just under 3%. That said, the data suggest that electrification is feasible at a much wider scale over the near term.
Given that over 85% of commercial trucks travel less than 100 miles each day, range shouldn’t be a concern for most fleets. Also, given that most fleets are likely to charge off-duty at their depots, a significant portion of the on-road freight system can electrify right now, even as the national truck charging network is still being built out. In fact, over three-quarters of commercial vehicles are parked for more than six hours each day, allowing ample time to charge at their depots.
Electric trucks do weigh more than combustion vehicles due to their batteries, which has raised some concerns around payload (how much the truck carries), but both industry and federal agency data show that the biggest limit on the payload isn’t how much it weighs, but how much space it takes up. We can achieve most of the shift we need with technologies that are available and economically feasible right now.
It’s true that some barriers to electrification remain for a small but consequential group of trucks: those that travel very long distances each day or that have very high energy demands. Think cross-country tractor trucks or industrial vacuum trucks. For these special cases, we need policies and programs that promote further development of the technology and expand truck charging access. But those challenges shouldn’t hold us back from implementing the change we can make today across the vast majority of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.
AAS: When you think about the future described in your report, what are the benefits? What’s most exciting for you?
The most immediate upside of an electrified freight future is cleaner air. The most vulnerable communities—both from economic and health perspectives—are also those who suffer the most from pollution from trucks. Where I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, dirty and loud trucks and trains were a fact of life and many folks I know struggle with asthma and other respiratory issues to this day. Truck electrification will help to level the playing field: fewer sicknesses, fewer lost school and work days, and fewer premature deaths. Cleaning up our on-road freight system will bring significant and immediate benefits to people today.
It’s also, of course, a big step in the right direction on climate change, so it’s an investment in future generations as well.
One of the things that I find really exciting about freight electrification is that fleet operators are estimated to see billions of dollars in benefits from deploying more efficient and reliable electric trucks. I’ve been in the air quality and climate change regulatory field for a long time and have never seen a situation with such significant economic benefits for the industry itself. It’s a true win-win-win.
While larger types of electric trucks are more expensive than comparable diesel models today, electric trucks of all types are substantially cheaper when it comes to fuel and maintenance, which are often the largest lifetime costs for trucks. Most studies suggest that nearly all electric truck types will have the lowest lifetime costs among all fuel types by the end of the decade, ushering in significant cost savings for businesses. And since the cost of transportation is part of the price of everything you buy, including the volatile price of oil, those savings matter for all of us.
AAS: Your new report is called Ready for Work 2.0. What has changed since UCS last studied this issue? Is there anything that surprised you about your new findings?
I mentioned the impressive growth in new electric truck registrations earlier—up from just a handful a few years ago to over 27,000 new trucks registered in 2023 alone. This growth isn’t just happening in the most obvious places like California. In fact, Washington, Georgia, and Florida had the largest share of zero-emission vans. The transition isn’t a hypothetical thing that might happen eventually. It’s happening now.
Also, domestic manufacturing and supporting supply chains for electric trucks have seen meaningful growth in the past several years. Major brands are on track to ramp up electric tractor-truck manufacturing capacity significantly. This increased availability will be a game changer: fleets are testing new electric trucks today and are showing some models travel over 800 miles a day. And they’re not just carrying a bag of potato chips down the block. These are loads that are maxed out at the federal weight limit (82,000 pounds) and traveling over 7,000-foot mountain passes.
That said, I was also surprised to learn that most trucks aren’t maxed out. The most recent US Census survey of commercial trucks found that when you look at the total mileage driven by trucks, a tiny percentage of it is driven by trucks that are near the federal weight limit. For most fleets, payload isn’t a major barrier to electrification.
AAS: How have you collaborated with other experts and advocates to shape this work? How did that affect the questions you’re asking and the way you’re thinking about solutions?
I’m very happy to be working with a diverse coalition of organizations, from small community groups to multinational manufacturers, who all have an interest in freight electrification.
In particular, we’ve been able to work with community organizations focused on protecting people’s health. These partners are focused on meaningful, feasible, and lasting policies that reduce the harms of our freight system, and they informed the key questions in the report. Several partners provided feedback and peer review for this project to improve the shelf life and relevancy of the work.
Some of the questions we asked were also informed by the claims made by opponents to accelerated electrification. I wanted to better understand how to overcome the real obstacles to a sustainable freight system, and how to counter perceived obstacles or misinformation.
AAS: Your report describes significant progress in recent years towards electrification. What has contributed to that positive change, and how can UCS supporters help to accelerate this transition?
What we’ve learned so far is quite exciting and suggests that we’re heading in the right direction, but we are still in the very early stages. To really speed things along, we’re pushing for policies that help us get there: continued federal support for domestic electric truck manufacturing, state and federal support for electrifying fleets through incentives, and both public and private investments in charging infrastructure.
UCS supporters can support this work by encouraging their elected officials to continue the support for domestic electric truck manufacturing investments and incentives we saw under the previous administration. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law put our nation on a much better track to lead the world toward a cleaner, energy efficient, and cost-effective freight system. Unfortunately, the current administration and Congress aren’t living up to that promise, and this progress and our nation’s leadership are at risk.
Fleets around the world are moving towards these cleaner and more efficient trucks, and if the US backs away, other countries will fill in the gap while we get left behind. We have an opportunity to lead the world toward a more sustainable way of doing business, which we shouldn’t squander for the sake of politics.
UCS supporters can also push for electrification by being more conscious and informed consumers. If you need to buy a product or service, try to support local businesses that have deployed electric trucks, or let them know that you hope they do soon!