These days, there have been several news pieces popping up about heavy-duty trucks, all related to autonomous driving and electric vehicles.
First, Volvo announced a collaboration with the autonomous driving company Aurora to launch a semi-truck.
Following that, Tesla also announced its plans to deliver another 50 Semi heavy-duty trucks to Pepsi, while also debunking rumors about electric heavy-duty trucks not being able to haul heavy loads.
Honestly, I haven't paid much attention to the field of pure electric heavy-duty trucks before. Even when I heard related news, it was often in a negative light.
People would say things like poor battery life and inability to carry heavy loads, with some even claiming that the Semis bought by Pepsi were only used to transport potato chips (when in reality, they were transporting cola).
Recently, there have been several "positive" pieces of news that caught my attention, so I decided to look into it. I found that there are indeed some advantages to pure electric heavy-duty trucks.
Strictly speaking, electric trucks might actually be more suitable for heavy-duty tasks compared to traditional diesel vehicles.
Heavy-duty trucks are mainly used for transporting goods to make a profit, and as a productivity tool, what most people value is its cost-effectiveness.
Interestingly, when it comes to running on the road, pure electric heavy-duty trucks are the kings of cost-effectiveness.
In the heavy-duty truck industry, there is a cost-effectiveness indicator called Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
According to a report on "Overview and Future Development Trends of China's New Energy Heavy-duty Trucks," looking at TCO, for a vehicle of the same specifications running 600,000 kilometers, the operating cost for a diesel truck is 2.11 million yuan, while a pure electric heavy-duty truck costs only 1.77 million yuan, saving nearly 340,000 yuan.
Of course, the most crucial issues for heavy-duty trucks are their payload capacity and range, but we don't need to worry too much about that. Over the past couple of years, several manufacturers have been proving to everyone that these are not major concerns.
Take Tesla's Semi, for example. When it was first delivered in 2022, it underwent a payload distance test and managed to run nearly 800 kilometers with a full load of 36 tons.
Furthermore, at the end of last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China announced in the 378th batch of "Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products" that there is a pure electric heavy-duty truck capable of carrying 49 tons and traveling 960 kilometers on a single charge.
Moreover, replacing traditional fuel-powered heavy-duty trucks with pure electric ones is much more environmentally friendly than switching our daily fuel cars to electric vehicles.
According to data from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, heavy-duty trucks are responsible for 85% of nitrogen oxides and 65% of particulate matter emissions from vehicles.
Although they make up a small proportion of the vehicle population, heavy-duty trucks have always been the main source of exhaust emissions. By switching to pure electric vehicles, we can completely avoid such issues.
More importantly, pure electric trucks have little noise, are more convenient with the addition of assisted driving and autonomous driving, in short, it is very beneficial for vehicle owners.
However, speaking of pure electric heavy-duty trucks, all these advantages are based on two premises: one is to reduce the cost of manufacturing them, and the other is to have a complete charging and swapping system.
In my opinion, these two premises are still in the early stages of development.
Firstly, in terms of cost, in order to ensure the endurance of pure electric heavy-duty trucks, manufacturers only have two choices: one is to stack batteries like crazy, and the other is to increase the energy density of the batteries.
Regardless of the choice, you need loads of cash.
This also means that electric heavy-duty trucks with similar carrying capacity and range cost more than twice as much as their diesel counterparts.
Take Tesla's Semi for example, buying one of these would set you back nearly a million bucks, and even if you halve that price, you could still get a powerful diesel truck for the same amount.
Spending this much money aside, the real issue is the space and payload taken up by so many batteries.
Previously, someone estimated the weight of Tesla Semi's batteries. Based on an energy density of 180wh/kg for the 4860 batteries, the version with an 800 km range would have batteries weighing nearly 6 tons.
Truck drivers who operate heavy-duty vehicles rely on weight to make money, so they are very concerned about the truck's own weight.
When you introduce an all-electric heavy-duty truck, without a second thought, the batteries alone weigh several tons, naturally discouraging many drivers.
Even if these drivers can endure it, the issue of charging and swapping batteries for pure electric heavy-duty trucks is not something that can be simply overlooked. One small mistake could lead to both the driver and the vehicle being abandoned on the roadside.
Looking at the charging and swapping ecosystem for pure electric heavy-duty trucks in our country, it can only be described as somewhat incomplete.
Currently, the charging and swapping stations for our pure electric heavy-duty trucks are still trying to catch up with demand.
Those willing to use pure electric heavy-duty trucks are mainly in two scenarios: closed environments like ports, steel plants, and mines, or for short-distance transportation such as urban waste trucks and vehicles transporting coal from mines to power plants.
As a result, there is hardly any charging and swapping ecosystem along the routes for long-haul heavy-duty trucks.
What's even more awkward is that in recent years, battery swapping solutions have become increasingly popular in the market for pure electric heavy-duty trucks.
Last year, academician Ouyang Minggao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences predicted that among all new energy heavy-duty trucks, battery-swapping heavy-duty trucks could account for 70%, and the sales volume of battery-swapping heavy-duty trucks is expected to continue to rise in the future.
Building a charging and swapping station is extremely costly. According to information from the Automotive News website, just constructing a heavy-duty truck swapping station (separating the vehicle from the battery) costs over 20 million RMB. This doesn't even include expenses like land rent and daily maintenance.
In comparison, a non-land-consuming charging pile costing 65,000 RMB is quite affordable. Once the charging efficiency is sorted out, it can also make use of drivers' meal and rest times to charge the trucks. However, for now, these are just our ideas.
As things stand, the chances of massively deploying charging and swapping stations and popularizing pure electric heavy-duty trucks seem quite slim.
