Are Hybrid Technologies a Pathway for Decarbonising Heavy Vehicles?
Battery electric heavy vehicles are unlikely to be the answer for road transport decarbonisation. Hybrid technologies are a better choice as they leverage different technologies' complementarity
Heavy vehicles decarbonisation is a high-level priority across the Western world. The EU maintains an aggressive 45% emissions reduction target for trucks, buses and coaches by 2030, and net zero emissions by 2050. The US announced earlier this year the “First-Ever National Goal of Zero-Emissions Freight Sector” that will “enable zero-emissions medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to reach 30 percent of new sales in 2030 and 100 percent of new sales by 2040.” Canada is “developing a medium- and heavy-duty zero-emission vehicle sales mandate to ensure that 100% of medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales are ZEVs [Zero emission vehicles – battery and fuel cell electric] by 2040 for a subset of vehicle types based on feasibility. “(Source) and Australia is currently conducting its consultation on Transport and Infrastructure Net Zero Consultation Roadmap to guide the achievement of net zero emissions in the sector by 2050.
Although several decarbonisation technologies are competing to decarbonise heavy vehicles, including hydrogen fuel cells, green ammonia or green methanol, the only real mass market technology available is battery electric heavy vehicles (BEHV). This is similar to personal mobility decarbonisation where the only real decarbonisation alternative on the auto market are battery electric vehicles (BEVs). However, in light of the recent BEV adoption challenges, it is worthwhile to compare similarities and differences between BEHV and BEVs as technologies for decarbonisation.
The key insights from this substack are that heavy vehicle decarbonisation using BEHVs will be more challenging than decarbonising light vehicles through BEVs mainly because the vehicles serve different roles: heavy vehicles are often revenue generation AND cost-centre assets for businesses whereas personal vehicles are often just costs, especially for businesses. Purchase incentives may therefore not be enough to catalyse decarbonisation.
Hybrid solutions may therefore be a more realistic and achievable answer to heavy vehicle decarbonisation. These don’t refer just to hybrids in the traditional sense (fossil fuel engine + electric motor) but to solutions that combine complementary technologies, leveraging their advantages and mitigating their drawbacks.
The Hybrid Futures report produced by my consulting business, Foresion, explores hybrid solutions in an Australian context, although clearly these solutions are perfectly suited for other contexts just as well. This substack goes through some of the report’s key points and provides some additional analysis on the reasons why incentives for heavy vehicle decarbonisation won’t be enough to catalyse the transition away from fossil fuels.
Incentives Cover Costs Not Revenues
A key point that emerged from the EVs on life support three-part series (read part 1, part 2 and part 3) was that BEV adoption especially in the EU was primarily corporate driven as BEVs are currently one of the few ways in which many corporations can reduce their Scope 1 (own operations) emissions. As a result, the vehicles’ characteristics (e.g., range, battery lifespan and degradation, etc.) and operating costs (e.g., battery replacement, maintenance, charging) had a limited influence on the BEV corporate purchase decision whereas the vehicles’ purchase cost had a substantial influence on purchase decisions (evidenced by the fact that when incentives were reduced or removed, demand for BEVs almost collapsed). BEVs are therefore a means to an end, that is reporting emissions reductions.
Private buyers BEV adoption has lagged precisely because this group of buyers had other concerns beyond the purchase price. Although the BEV purchase price was the highest concern for many buyers, insufficient driving range, battery life concerns and fear of increasing electricity prices followed closely. The private buyer BEV purchase decision appears much more nuanced than simply the cheapest vehicle by purchase price. Vehicles for private buyers are a means to an end that is mobility. Consequently, the vehicle’s characteristics and performance matter significantly more than for corporate buyers.
What do all these things have to do with heavy vehicles?
Heavy vehicles, for most businesses are assets that both generate revenue AND carry costs. This may seem a somewhat self-evident assertion, but it is an important one. Businesses use heavy vehicles to deliver a service. Businesses generate revenue through the delivery of the (usually transport or mobility) service and the service delivery incurs costs for the business. Heavy vehicles characteristics and features (payload, fuelling speed, etc.) influence both the vehicles’ revenue generation capacity and their cost structure. For instance, higher payloads reduce labour and fuel costs per kilometre while allowing higher potential revenues per vehicle.
In this sense, battery electric heavy vehicles (BEHVs) present similar challenges as BEVs, especially those raised by private buyers. Perhaps the key challenge BEHVs face is the range. The Mercedes eActross for instance boasts a range of up to 400 km per charge at 10% payload, in warm weather and long-distance driving. The range drops to less than 200 km per charge at 100% payload, in cold weather and urban driving.
The range issue is of course less about how long one can drive without having to stop to charge but how long the charging takes. Irrespective of how whether charging takes one hour or two hours for a 60% charge (from 20% to 80%, the usual figure manufacturers discuss), this implies one or two hours in which the truck driver is paid but not driving and fewer operating hours and delivery opportunities for a truck to disperse its fixed costs. The same challenges emerge when talking about battery degradation or cold weather performance. Reductions in range for whatever reason mean less operational time hence less potential revenue and higher fixed costs per distance driven.
The main consequence of BEHVs issues is, in a similar way to BEVs, that purchase incentives and subsidies will likely be insufficient to convince a large majority of heavy vehicles operators to transition away from fossil fuels. Incentives are just one part of the equation that affect the total cost of ownership. Incentives and subsidies do virtually nothing to the operation and revenue side of the BEHV equation. As a result, BEHV adoption will likely be slow, and certainly not aligned with the ambitious emissions reduction goals of most Western nations.
Hybrid Technologies– Complementarity in Action
Hybrid technologies may be an answer to the challenges of transitioning to BEHV by leveraging the complementarity of different technologies. The word hybrid, especially in the automotive context, usually refers to a combination of an internal combustion engine (ICE) and an electric motor with a battery. That is one hybrid technology. There are others as well, such as catenary trucks, hydrogen injection into ICE, bio- and synthetic fuels (so called drop-in fuels). These technologies require investments (as any other transition technology) but do not have the same drawbacks as pure battery electric technologies.
The one technology I find rather fascinating is the catenary trucks – not only because I grew up with trolleybuses. “Catenary trucks involve installing a pantograph on a heavy vehicle to capture and use electricity from overhead wires installed on roads or freeways. The trucks are equipped with an electric motor as well as an internal combustion engine (ICE) for unelectrified segments of road. The third-generation catenary trucks has substituted the ICE with BEV or the plug-in hybrid technology” (Source). The technology is being trialled for heavy vehicles but is already in use in buses. “Bus manufacturers such as Polish company Solaris manufacture electric buses that can operate both using electricity from overhead wires or on-board battery packs” (Source).
The catenary truck technology will significant infrastructure investments, especially for long distance transport. Wires need to be laid out alongside the sections of roads or highways that will be electrified. However, this isn’t very different than the investments required for charging infrastructure. The E.U. for instance legislated in 2023 that fast charging stations with a total output of 400 kW for cars and vans and 600 kW for heavy-duty vehicles need to be built every 60 kilometres alongside highways. This entails drawing the electricity infrastructure to the charging stations and the ability to deliver high voltage relatively quickly. Drawing overhead wires for catenary trucks will likely require similar infrastructure.
Catenary technology provides energy in motion (thus circumventing many issues charging stations pose in terms of charging times) and energy consumption synchronous with renewable energy generation (because most transport happens during the day when renewables, especially photovoltaics, tend to generate most energy). The on-board battery or ICE provides operational flexibility beyond the available catenary infrastructure thus providing relatively similar vehicle operating performance.
Catenary trucks are one example of a hybrid approach that can blend fuel sources and technologies thus taking advantage of the complementarity between them. This is also a technology that is known and thus has a substantially lower adoption risk. These types of approaches can help reduce emissions (although perhaps not as much as battery electric or fuel cell electric technologies) but pave the way for further sustainable innovation. You can read about other hybrid technologies and solutions in the Hybrid future report here.
Nice article, very informative!