EV big rigs already make sense for half of the $4 trillion freight truck market, says Einride CEO
The diesel-powered trucking industry moves a majority of freight, up to 70% in the U.S. alone. In California, trucks are the largest single source of vehicle-produced air pollution that “spew 70% of the state’s smog-forming gases and 80% of carcinogenic diesel pollutants,” according to the California Air Resources Board, making the trucking sector a key part of the emissions reduction challenge.
Swedish EV trucking startup Einride has been able to so far go toe-to-toe with Tesla and its Semi in attracting top corporate clients. Both have deals with PepsiCo — Einride in the U.K. and Tesla in California.
Einride also has global shipping giant Maersk, GE Appliances, AB InBev, Bridgestone, and Beyond Meat as customers.
While many of these deals are narrow to start with, Einride founder and CEO Robert Falck says the business case already exists today for many more freight players to make the transition from diesel to electric, up to half of the industry, according to Falck.
“In the $4 trillion freight mobility space, between 40%-50% should be electric driven by the business case today,” Falck said on CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange” in an interview on Thursday after his company ranked No. 13 on the 2023 CNBC Disruptor 50 list. “That means a $2 trillion opportunity already today,” he added.
Einride is one of three companies focused on trucking to make the 2023 Disruptor 50 list — Convoy, founded by former Amazon executives, came in at No. 47, and Flock Freight, the only certified B Corp in the freight sector, came in at No. 20. Additional logistics companies to make the list focused on technology-based solutions in transportation and climate include Flexport and Lineage Logistics.
The numbers on the EV cost equation, though, remain less than an exact science. A month ago, when appearing on CNBC to discuss the new deal with PepsiCo, Falk estimated that 30%-40% of the market could make the EV transition based on cost today. Not much has changed for the better in the math in just a month. In fact, diesel prices continue to trend lower, and haven’t been this low since before Russia invaded Ukraine, taking away a short-term advantage for the EV argument.
Diesel prices hit an all-time high last year in June of last year, and have fallen by 25% or more since then.
“In the near-term, of course, the business case for diesel becomes slightly better,” Falck said in the April interview.
But he stressed that the big brand examples of companies already signing on as clients prove the case. “They want to get the benefits of going sustainable but would not be willing to do it without a cost-competitive way,” he said on Thursday.
Diesel vs. EV economics
In many markets, independent of short-term movements in diesel prices, EV is cheaper for trucking, according to Falck, though it does depend on the cost of electricity. And as trucking hardware becomes cheaper and more widely available, the case for the EV transition will increase.
Part of the challenge is in the recharging, In September, the Department of Transportation approved EV-charging station plans for all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, covering about 75,000 miles of highways. States also have access to more than $1.5 billion in funds to help construct the chargers.
Einride’s business model, Falck stressed, and the business case for its customers, is not just about the truck manufacturing — it does not manufacture the trucks itself — but the turnkey solution that extends from the vehicle to the trailer design to the infrastructure (e.g. charging) to operations across the transportation system and its digital freight network solution.
In freight, unlike the consumer market, “it’s not about range, it’s about how to secure the business case,” he said.
Its trucks in the Class 8 tractor-trailer niche have a range of 400 miles.
Swedish electric vehicle maker Einride will supply two of its heavy-duty trucks to PepsiCo as part of an expansion into the U.K.
Einride
Independent research does support the idea of more freight going EV. Nonprofit newsgroup Cal Matters found that the total cost of buying and operating an electric semi-truck could be anywhere from $765,000 to $1.1 million, while a gas or diesel truck ranges from $919,000 to $1.2 million.
Interest in the state of California is high because the California Air Resources Board is requiring truck manufacturers to begin phasing in available heavy-duty EV technology by 2024. But in the state, which is a leader in climate technology and climate regulation — and one of the world’s largest economies — for now at least, the larger focus is on short-haul trucking.
California has set the goal of all zero-emission short-haul drayage fleets — for operations in and nearby ports — by 2035. Schneider, a truckload, intermodal and logistics service, announced its battery-electric truck (BEV) fleet back in 2021, and the first BEV arrived at a Southern California port this year.
″We’re going to be operating those in and out of railheads for intermodal customers, and so we’ll start with five taking this month and will be up to about that hundred number by the time we get through the calendar year,” Schneider CEO Mark Rourke said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” in February.
Autonomous big rigs
But bigger trucks are critical for climate goals. Medium and heavy trucks make up only about 4% of vehicles in the U.S., but because of their larger size and greater travel distances, the vehicles consume more than 25% of total highway fuel and represent nearly 30% of highway carbon emissions, according to the Department of Energy.
While Einride is making bold calls about the EV transition today, Falck is cautious on one aspect of the technology that gets a lot of attention: autonomous trucking. He said Einride does see the short-haul market being a better fit today for the autonomous transition, and described the process of moving to autonomous trucks as “gradual.”
For most goods being moved by autonomous electric vehicles today, it is inside warehouses and logistics centers. “We’ve taken the same approach,” he said. “We start with manual electric and gradually introduce more and more autonomy. We’re already doing autonomous for clients, but not everywhere. We start with the simple applications, fenced-off areas … low speeds.”
“We gradually grow into this,” Falck said. “This is not just about making a truck autonomous, it’s changing the entire transport system.”
That will be measured in decades, in his option. “In 25 years, we will predominantly be electric and autonomous,” Falck said.
—CNBC’s Kaitlin Balasaygun contributed reporting.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will remove “safety monitors” from the passenger seats of Tesla’s Robotaxi vehicles in “about three weeks,” which would mean we’d see completely driverless Teslas in the Austin area potentially by the end of the year – if that timeline sticks.
Tesla has been working on a system that would allow vehicles to drive themselves, which has been in “beta” release for over a decade now. It calls this system “Full Self-Driving,” despite the fact that the system does not currently drive itself.
That has not stopped Musk from consistently promising more and more of the system, despite its stagnating capabilities. Over the course of the last decade, Musk has consistently promised driverless vehicles within the coming year, with deadlines consistently passing by without achieving that goal.
One of those promises has been the creation of a driverless taxi network, which Tesla used to call “Tesla Network” and is now calling “Robotaxi.” The idea originally came with the promise that owners could use their cars to make money by running them as taxis, but that hasn’t panned out.
Tesla did roll out its own version of a taxi network, though, in Austin, in June of this year. While it’s done a few cool things, the cars each have a “safety monitor” in the passenger seat who can take control at any time, which means the cars aren’t truly “driverless” since there is an operator, they’ve just been moved to the passenger seat.
In the time since Robotaxi’s rollout, it’s made quite a few mistakes and had a high crash rate. But Tesla also delivered one fully unoccupied vehicle from the factory to a local buyer, which was a cool (and, as yet, still unique) stunt.
Throughout the year, Musk has claimed loudly that the system would improve rapidly, stating that by the end of the year Robotaxis would be available to half of the US population (they are not) and that Tesla’s fleet would grow by more than 10x by the end of the year (it has not).
But now we have another bold prediction from Musk, stating that the safety monitors will be out of a job by the end of the year.
During a videoconference at a hackathon event for xAI, one of Musk’s other companies (which he is trying to get Tesla shareholders to bail out), Musk was asked a question about the barriers to unsupervised full self-driving. Musk answered:
Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. There will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them, not even anyone in the passenger seat, in about three weeks. I think it’s pretty much a solved problem, we’re just going through validation right now.
The “three weeks” timeline is familiar to longtime Tesla followers. Over the years, Musk has often promised fixes or software updates in “two weeks,” and they often take longer than that.
Three weeks is a lot closer than the “next year” promise that we’ve heard so many times for full autonomy, but given its proximity to the oft-inaccurate two-week timeline, we’re not sure these vehicles will actually be ready in time for New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Nevertheless, it’s a closer timeline than Musk has usually given, so there may be truly driverless Teslas operating sometime soon™.
Also, reading the statement more closely, it sounds like they won’t necessarily remove safety operators from every vehicle, but some vehicles. This could be similar to the singular driverless vehicle delivery that Tesla did – a PR stunt, rather than a full rollout. We’ll have to wait and see.
Tesla’s main competitor in the robotaxi space is Waymo, which has been operating truly driverless vehicles for several years now. The company has also been operating autonomous, driverless vehicles in Austin since March of this year.
Musk went on to talk about future improvements to Tesla’s software and hardware in his answer.
The company is currently on hardware previously deemed HW4, though to cash in on the AI stock market bubble, it now refers to that system as AI4. He said that AI5 will be 10-40 times better than HW4 and go into volume production in 2027, with AI6 coming soon after.
Musk’s mention of future hardware improvements neglects one important aspect of these improvements, which is that for every hardware improvement Tesla puts into its fleet, the more vehicles it will have to upgrade later.
Tesla long promised that its vehicles had all the hardware for self-driving, which means it’s going to have to upgrade a lot of cars – and there are court cases around the world seeking to force the company to do so. Together, these lawsuits and other potential challenges could mean billions of dollars in liabilities for the company.
Musk then closed his statements by claiming that “our” goal is to “to understand the meaning of life and… propagate consciousness out to the stars,” which is not Tesla’s goal. Tesla’s actual goal is to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. He may have been referring to xAI’s goal, but given the answer was about Tesla, perhaps he was confused (or perhaps he doesn’t care about Tesla anymore, and isn’t a good CEO for the company as a result…)
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VW’s retro-tastic minivan hasn’t been the sales success the company might have wanted, and a lot of that has to do with the van’s sky high price tag. Now, VW is asking: will a $10,000 discount be enough to create some buzz for the ID.Buzz?
Volkswagen is offering $7,500 in Retail Customer Bonus cash this month – up from the $2,500 the company offered its Black Friday customers – that, along with an additional $2,500 unadvertised dealer cash incentive that CarsDirect is reporting absolutely, definitely exists, adds up to a stout $10,000 total discount on the all-electric VW ID.Buzz … and that’s before you start haggling with your dealer over the MSRP.
It’s a lot
As much as I like the the Volkswagen ID.Buzz, its starting MSRP around $61,545 (incl. destination) puts it at nearly twice what you’d probably expect a minivan to cost if the last time you shopped for one was at a Dodge store. Still, that hefty price tag is some $20,000 higher than the baseline Toyota Sienna hybrid or Honda Odyssey.
That 50% higher price is a lot to swallow even if you do buy into the nostalgia. Still, the ID.Buzz is capable enough, and with ~230 miles of range and 282 hp on offer from its battery/electric motor combo – plus Supercharger access – it’s at least able to keep up with the minivan competition.
So, while that $10,000 discount isn’t going to turn the ID.Buzz into the second coming of the affordable, family-hauling Caravan, it does bring VW’s electric people-mover a little closer to earth. In fact, with a $50K price tag, it’s right in line with the average transaction price of a new vehicles. So, if nothing else, that reduced price could finally gives electric minivan buyers something to buzz about (I tried so hard to work that in, you guys).
If you’ve been shopping for a family-hauler and dig the retro vibe over something like the (excellent) Kia EV9, click through the link below and set up a test drive at your local VW dealer.
SOURCE: CarsDirect; images via VW.
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Peterbilt has jumped into the MD truck ring with the launch three new medium-duty electric trucks that deliver zero-emissions power, ultra-fast 350 kW charging, and proven, versatile platforms for delivery, utility service, and vocational upfitting.
The new Peterbilt 536EV, 537EV, and 548EV medium-duty trucks slot into the same versatile medium-duty segments the company’s fleets already know, but swap diesel power for latest PACCAR ePowertrain, with up to 605 hp and 1,850 lb-ft of torque available at 0 rpm. That big motor draws power from a variety of LFP battery packs and be fitted with ePTO options rated for either 25 kW (two-battery option) or 150 kW (three-battery option), making them suitable for that can be sized for daily delivery routes, urban utility work, and municipal fleets looking to cut both emissions and maintenance costs.
What’s more, the new Peterbilt’s flexible architecture allows for integration with existing PACCAR suspension bits to make 4×2 and 6×4 configurations, and any wheelbase of 163 inches or longer, and up to 82,000 lbs. gross combined weight ratings possible.
“[The new trucks are] optimized for the demands of the medium duty segment, the next generation of Peterbilt electric vehicles deliver excellent efficiency, rapid charging and versatile configurations elevating customer productivity across a wide range of applications,” said Erik Johnson, Peterbilt assistant general manager, Sales & Marketing.
In addition to all those goodies, the PACCAR EV tech continues to be top-notch, with the previously-mentioned 350 kW charging, regenerative braking, and industry-leading ergonomics.
Peterbilt’s new MDEVs ship with a blue accented crown and grille for a distinctive exterior look, as well as EV-exclusive panels on the side of the hood. The interior design features laser-etched trim panels on the EV-exclusive Magneto Gray interior, just in case the driver in the quiet, smooth, and stink-free cabin forgets they’re in an electric truck.
Electrek’s Take
Ignore the headlines. The death of the commercial EV market simply hasn’t happened, and won’t happen any time soon.
If you believe the engineers and analysts at MAN Trucks and Orange EV (and, you should), an EV like this can pay for itself in reduced fuel and maintenance costs even without incentives, then you should already know what I’m about to say: the future of trucking is 100% electric.
SOURCE | IMAGES: PACCAR.
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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
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