💡 I fell into a rabbit hole this weekend; I wanted to know how close we are to #electrify our road #logistics - not last mile but long haul. It's pretty exciting so I'll share an overview below and some deep dives in the following posts.
1️⃣ The #businesscase for #electrictrucks isn’t there yet, but importantly, there's a clear path to it. The variable costs are simply lower (fuel vs. electricity and maintenance being the two big ones). The infrastructure isn’t there yet to truly realize these, and the fixed costs are still much too high (cost of the truck) as we’re not yet at mass production - until then; subsidies and scope 3 reduction budgets are key.
2️⃣ We're pretty much there from a #technicalfeasibility perspective. The latest @Tesla Semi has a range of up to 500 miles and charges in 30-45 min. That can perfectly serve long haul requirements and fits naturally together with the legal requirements driver resting stops.
3️⃣ It will take a long #time to electrify all use cases for trucking; the long tail of routes won't see infrastructure for awhile, and the long tail of truck types will also take awhile to get innovated. However, a very large share of trucking is simple palletized freight that runs along the same large routes. Infrastructure investments will be concentrated around these, enabling quicker adoption.
👉 That also means that as a #sustainabilityprofessional, you shouldn't expect to replace all your trucking soon, but instead focus on industry collaborations along the major routes, so we can concentrate demand and infrastructure investments.
4️⃣ The #sustainabilitycase still isn't clear cut. Moving away from diesel will kill a lot of pollution and set up the foundation for greener logistics once the electricity grid is running on #renewables. But #batteries are still hugely problematic, and we need to remember that producing a truck, any truck, will carry a large footprint and it will take many years of utilization before the lower emissions transport makes up for the emissions used to build it.
We shouldn't look to replace fleets of perfectly fine trucks, but probably more look to have the electric truck being the default replacement when older trucks are retired.
As always there's a ton of nuances behind these points so I'll share a few deep dives on each in the coming weeks.
Until then, let me know what you think!
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