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German hauliers using electric trucks are beginning to see cost-effectiveness as a reason to buy more, challenging the wider industry’s assumption that electric trucks remain dearer than diesel.
A new Oeko-Institut survey of 57 early adopters of electric trucks found that 93% were satisfied or very satisfied with their vehicles after extended use. Cost-effectiveness was more of a driver than an obstacle among these operators.
The survey covered established users: 56 of the 57 companies had run battery-electric heavy goods vehicles for at least a year, and between them the companies operate more than 300 electric trucks, including over 216 above 18 tonnes.
Most companies that have not yet run electric trucks are forming a view without doing the sums. In a separate Oeko-Institut survey of 204 German logistics decision-makers, 61% had never compared the total cost of ownership of an electric truck with that of a diesel one. Only a third expected electric to come out cheaper. The doubt was strongest among those with no hands-on experience: 57% assumed electric trucks would cost more.
The early-adopter survey points to one reason for that gap in perception: charging. The experienced operators were not relying on the public network. They drew 82.5% of their trucks’ energy from their own depots, where electricity is far cheaper, against just 4.1% from public truck chargers and 4% from public car points. That low-cost depot charging is the foundation of the cost case they describe.
Depot electricity averaged 23.77 euro cents/kWh net (around 21p/kWh), compared with 49 cents/kWh (around 42p/kWh) for public charging. With public charging costing roughly twice as much as depot electricity in the survey, operators with their own infrastructure had a clear advantage.
“Companies with sufficient grid connection capacity that can install depot charging infrastructure and make extensive use of it are already able, in some cases, to operate electric lorries economically compared to diesel lorries,” the researchers said.
The trucks are also moving beyond short-haul work. Twenty firms had bought a combined 110 electric trucks with a range of at least 500km in the previous year, running them an average of 432km a day. Of those firms, 70% used the vehicles in regional transport and 70% in national long-distance work: the kind of operation that leans most on the public charging network, the researchers described as still underdeveloped.
Beyond charging, the external factor operators valued most was the motorway toll exemption cited by the researchers: it was rated the single most important measure for further purchases, named as important by 81% of respondents.
