First – Happy birthday USA!
The North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE) has released its fourth and final market segment report: Electric Trucks Have Arrived: The Use Case For Medium-Duty Box Trucks.
The report is based on findings from its 2021 Run on Less – Electric (RoL-E) freight efficiency demonstration, and states that 100 percent of all medium-duty box trucks will be able to become electrified—but that some applications within the duty cycle will be easier to electrify than others owing to the complexity of some operations.
The report said that when the more simple box truck portion of this market segment electrifies—about 380,000 trucks in the US and Canada—it will result in the avoidance of 7,681,707 metric tonnes (MT) of CO2e annually.
“Electrification should happen fast for the simple trucks, and the industry should prioritize the other applications with regard to benefits and difficulty to bring to production given the smaller unit volumes,” said Mike Roeth, Executive Director with the NACFE.
During the 2021 testing, three fleet-OEM pairs in RoL-E operated medium-duty box trucks: Day & Ross with a Class 6 Lion6; Frito-Lay with a Class 6 Peterbilt-Cummins 220EV, and Roush Fenway Racing with a Class 6 ROUSH CleanTech Ford F-650.
Per the report, medium-duty box trucks are a great application for electric trucks because of shorter mileage runs and return-to-base operations. The report said that these vehicles are an ideal portion of the overall medium-duty truck market for electrification.
However, it pointed out, more complex Class 6 and 7 trucks such as snowplows, refuse trucks, and fire trucks will require significant efforts which will delay the timing of electrification.
The report included basic information about medium-duty box trucks and the size and scope of the market, including duty cycle and charging considerations, and offered its take on the pros and cons of battery electric vehicles.
The report also provided information on the manufacturers and fleets that already have medium-duty box trucks in the Run, and discussed the metric that were measured, and even provided a discourse on the total cost of operation.
“As we wrap up our report series from Run on Less – Electric, our detailed analysis of all four market segments are very much in line with our earlier thinking before and just after the Run,” Roeth continued. “The marketplace in these shorter haul, return-to-base operations are ready today to electrify and the industry should work together as one to amplify and realize the benefits while mitigating challenges and risks urgently.”
The full report can be found at the NACFE website: www.nacfe.org/medium-duty-box-trucks.