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On 5 September, the International Transport Forum published a report investigating the feasibility of decarbonising heavy-duty trucks in Europe with zero-emission powertrain technologies and how cost uncertainty of these vehicles can be minimised. The report gives six recommendations to accelerate the transition to zero-emission trucks, including the provision of necessary infrastructure.

In the report, the authors analysed the financial viability of three different zero-emission technologies (battery-electric vehicles, electric road systems and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) across nine-different vehicle-size segments and compared it to that of the conventional diesel vehicles. They found that zero-emission vehicles should generally become cost-competitive with diesel-propelled trucks between 2030 and 2040 across all vehicle sizes, smaller vehicle size even reaching cost parity in 2022. When differentiating zero-emission technologies, the report highlights that battery electric vehicles and electric road system vehicles have the potential to be the most cost-competitive technologies in Europe due to their energy efficiency and low operational costs, which offset upfront purchase costs. The authors consider however that hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles are less competitive than the other two zero-emission technologies, as they might play a niche role in the future fleet of heavy-duty road vehicles which in turn raises doubts about whether large-scale hydrogen refuelling infrastructure would be sufficiently utilised.

To tackle potential barriers to the mass adoption of zero-emission trucks (insufficient capital for higher purchase costs, slow deployment of supporting infrastructure, hesitancy to switch to new technologies), the report gives several recommendations to policymakers. Among others, the authors recommend introducing policies that help zero-emission vehicle become cost-competitive sooner, such as purchase subsidies or low-interest loans. Combined with road pricing and carbon taxation, these policies would make ZEVs cost competitive with diesel trucks before 2030 and help accelerate the decarbonisation of the road freight sector. The report also calls on policymakers to set clear and ambitious targets for the deployment of ZEV infrastructure, as well as strengthening the capacity of the electricity grid along main roads.

Source: ITF