Electric trucks are a duty-cycle problem, not just a vehicle problem

Ask whether an electric truck makes sense and the honest answer is: for which route? A truck is a tool for a particular duty cycle, meaning how far it runs, how heavy it is loaded, how long it stands still and where it can plug in. Change those and the economics change with them.

Where the money sits

The IEA's Global EV Outlook 2025 puts the 2024 upfront price of a battery-electric heavy-duty truck at two to three times that of a diesel truck. The battery is almost half of the upfront price of an 800 kWh, 500 km-range battery truck. Running costs pull the other way: battery-electric trucks are about 55% more energy-efficient than diesel, according to the same analysis.

The IEA finds that the balance differs by market. In China, battery-electric total cost of ownership is already below diesel in a number of applications; in the United States, diesel was still cheaper in 2024, with the gap narrowing toward parity around 2030. The same truck can be a good or poor buy depending on fuel prices, incentives and use.

India's starting point

NITI Aayog and RMI's 2022 report Transforming Trucking in India notes that trucks carry 70% of the country's freight. Under a mature-production scenario it projects lower total cost of ownership than diesel for medium-duty zero-emission trucks, and says heavy-duty trucks could feasibly reach parity by 2027. That is a projection from 2022, not a measurement.

The IEA notes that India's electric truck sales fell in 2024, and that the PM E-DRIVE scheme allocated USD 58 million for truck purchase incentives over two years. Subsidy design and real operating conditions both matter; neither alone settles it.

Charging is part of the route plan

A truck that stops anyway can charge while it stops. The IEA estimates that driver rest-period charging adds 15 minutes in the EU, 30 minutes in the US and 40 minutes in China for a 500 km daily route, and gives this illustration: a 350 kW charger adds about 200 km of range in roughly one hour, and a 1 MW charger does the same in about 20 minutes.

Utilisation matters as much as power. The IEA calculates how charger utilisation changes the economics: the levelised infrastructure cost per kWh falls by about 80%, when utilisation rises from 5% to 30%. Its analysis puts charging infrastructure's share of battery-electric truck cost of ownership at over 10% in the EU and US but around 3% in China. A charger that sits idle is expensive; one that fits a fixed schedule is not.

• Daily distance and payload decide how big the battery has to be.
• Where the truck is parked overnight decides whether depot charging can do most of the work.
• Fixed, repeating routes make charging predictable and utilisation high.
• Open-ended or long-haul work depends on corridor charging being there when needed.