The purpose of trucks is to move stuff. By just about every measure, electric trucks are worse at moving stuff than diesel trucks are.
That’s the takeaway from today’s newsletter by Rachel Premack for FreightWaves. She’s writing about a California regulation that will require all new drayage trucks (trucks that operate near ports) to be zero-emissions, starting next year. The entire drayage fleet is required to be zero-emissions by 2035. And people in the trucking industry and in the utility industry aren’t quite sure how that’s going to happen.
It’s a classic case of California regulatory policy: over-ambition in goals combined with underperformance in governance. Electric-truck technology simply isn’t ready to fully replace diesel trucks yet, but the climate alarmists demand action now. The various parts of California’s state government and the public utilities don’t seem to be able to install sufficient charging infrastructure to keep up with the demand that the state’s own regulations will create.
California regulatory debacles aren’t surprising; it would be more newsworthy if a California initiative succeeded. Shippers have noticed California’s mistakes and are increasingly sending their freight elsewhere.
What’s stunning is how bad electric trucks are. Premack reports several important details:
- Price. An electric drayage vehicle costs $185,000. Diesel trucks are about half that.
- Refueling. Filling up a diesel truck takes about 15 minutes. Recharging an electric truck takes hours.
- Infrastructure. California needs 11.5 gigawatts of new electric capacity by 2026 to meet the needs from its electrification mandates, which is difficult to accomplish because of the state’s other environmental regulations.
- Weight. Electric trucks are heavier than diesel trucks.
- Capacity. As a consequence of being heavier, electric trucks can’t carry as much freight as diesel trucks. The head of the trade association for California drayage truckers said that companies will need to double the size of their fleets just to haul the same amount of freight they currently do.
- Costs. As a result of being worse at moving stuff, electric trucks will impose higher costs throughout the supply chain than diesel trucks do, which could raise consumer prices.
The state government and private companies are going to spend gobs of money to buy electric trucks for which there aren’t yet charging stations or electric capacity, so that they can move less freight at higher cost. Brilliant transportation policy.