China's truck charge leaves UK playing catch-up

Writing on his TFIE Strategy Briefing website, Barnard argues that China’s latest heavy truck electrification strategy offers an important lesson for policymakers in the UK and Europe. While governments continue debating sales mandates, hydrogen and technology neutrality, he says China is concentrating on the practical foundations needed to make electric trucks work in the real world: charging hubs, battery swapping stations, freight corridors, grid upgrades and depot infrastructure.

Barnard says China’s target of making 40% of all new heavy truck sales “new-energy” vehicles by 2030 is only part of the story. The real significance, he argues, is everything happening behind the headline figure.

“The 40% target for new-energy heavy-truck sales by 2030 is the headline,” Barnard writes. “But the policy is more interesting than the headline because it is not merely a vehicle sales ambition. It is a plan for where the trucks run, where they charge or swap, and who has to make the rest of the freight system work.”

Instead of expecting operators to gamble on expensive new technology and hoping the infrastructure catches up later, Barnard says China is building the ecosystem first. The strategy includes plans for around 30,000km of zero-carbon freight corridors, backed by approximately 3,000 charging and battery-swapping stations for heavy trucks. Motorway service areas are being required to provide charging facilities – or at least reserve space for them – while electricity network operators are being told to plan ahead for the expected increase in power demand.

Barnard argues that China isn’t simply buying electric trucks; it’s redesigning the freight system around them. That, he believes, is where Britain and much of Europe risk falling behind.

“Truck electrification debates outside China still too often behave as if the question is mainly whether a battery truck can handle a specific duty cycle,” he says.

“The Chinese plan does not stop at that question. It moves quickly to corridors, service areas, logistics parks, ports, mines, depots, power systems, battery ownership models, insurance, maintenance, data standards, and the places where trucks are worked hard enough for the economics to show up.”

Chinese battery-electric heavy trucks already accounted for around one in five heavy-duty truck sales during the first half of 2025, while more than 230,000 new-energy heavy trucks were sold during the year. By 2030, China wants more than 1.6 million electric and other new-energy heavy trucks on its roads, carrying almost a fifth of the country’s highway freight.

Barnard stresses that diesel will still dominate much of the market by then, but says China has accepted that electrification is about building practical freight solutions rather than chasing unrealistic headlines. Its strategy focuses on the sectors where batteries already make commercial sense, including ports, logistics parks, mines, construction sites, container operations, urban delivery and high-utilisation freight corridors.

Hydrogen

His analysis also questions hydrogen’s prospects in mainstream road freight. Although China’s policy mentions hydrogen refuelling in specific applications, Barnard says almost all of the government’s effort is focused elsewhere.

“The hydrogen language in the policy should not be overread,” he writes. “Hydrogen appears in the document. Electricity gets most of the implementation machinery.”

Instead, the strategy concentrates on charging infrastructure, battery swapping, electricity grids, battery leasing, maintenance, servicing, standards, insurance and finance – the less glamorous pieces of the puzzle that determine whether fleets can actually make the switch. Barnard argues this is precisely where many western governments continue to fall short.

“Countries that keep hydrogen, biofuels, e-fuels, overhead wires, batteries, and ‘technology neutrality’ equally alive on paper are not always being neutral,” he writes. “They are often avoiding the infrastructure choices fleets need.”

The analysis is likely to strike a chord with UK operators, many of whom have repeatedly warned that a lack of charging infrastructure and grid capacity remains one of the biggest barriers to investing in battery-electric HGVs. Rather than asking individual fleets to take the leap alone, Barnard believes governments should concentrate on creating the conditions that make investment commercially viable.

“China’s plan treats electric trucks as part of a freight-and-power buildout rather than as clean vehicles waiting for individual fleet buyers to take a flyer on them,” he concludes.

“The more useful lesson is that the plan does not ask electric trucks to succeed one fleet at a time, unsupported by the rest of the freight system. It attaches them to corridors, depots, grid upgrades, service areas, swapping stations, battery rules, repair networks, and freight markets where the economics can become ordinary. That is the part other countries should be studying.”

For UK operators facing decisions on future fleet investment, Barnard’s argument is that the biggest challenge is no longer simply whether electric trucks can work, but whether the infrastructure exists to make them work at scale.