Leveraging big data to unveil challenges and opportunities in truck electrification

The electrification of heavy-duty trucks is a major challenge in achieving zero-emission transportation. Despite the great ambition to promote electric trucks (ETs), their current sales are nascent now across the world compared with the soaring number of electric cars or electric buses. In this study, we gathered the year-long real-world monitoring records of 45 million trips from 60,418 electric trucks in China (over one third of 2021 global stock). Compared with similar dataset from diesel trucks (DTs), significant underusage was unveiled as a major challenge of electric truck deployment. We leveraged the big data to derive two usage metrics as feasibility indicators: “priority group ratio” denoting the ratio of vehicles feasible for one-on-one replacement, and “replacement rate” denoting the average number of ETs needed to replace one DT after matching fleet-level transport demand. We observed that for current electric delivery trucks and semi-trailers, approximately 23% and 30% of vehicles in the fleets could achieve one-on-one replacement with diesel counterparts, while on average 3.8 and 3.6 electric trucks are required to match the transportation demand served by one diesel trucks separately. Integrating usage patterns with life-cycle modeling, we evaluated actual individual- and fleet-level cost and decarbonization effects of truck electrification by category. The results showed that although current ETs can achieve considerable well-to-wheels (WTW) CO2 emission reductions for most fleets in most of the grid regions, carbon emissions associated with battery supply chains and lower vehicle mileage lead to a mixed profile in life-cycle decarbonization effects for ETs compared with DTs. In the near future (e.g., 2030), enhancements in usage pattern, vehicle technology and charging infrastructure can effectively improve electrification feasibility, yielding cost and decarbonization benefits. For example, battery energy density increase and battery swapping can make one-on-one electrification feasible for over 85% diesel semi-trailers. Additionally, with cleaner electricity electric semi-trailers can almost achieve cost parity and decarbonization benefits in the coming decade. Our analysis highlights the importance of leveraging big data to inform the decision-making process in the electrification transition.