Crunching the numbers on electric trucks: It’s all about charging time and costs

At the Smart Energy 2025 conference in Sydney this week, there was a Volvo electric prime mover in the room and I got to have seat, even without a safety induction.

It does make me think about Coalition leader Peter Dutton and his petrol tanker photo opps. And reducing oil imports, never mind the carbon.

I was surprised that such an advanced piece of kit was to be found in Sydney, but speaking to Tim Camilleri at Volvo E-mobility I learned a little about the business case where it makes sense.

Team Global Express (TGE) built an echarging depot at Bungarribee near Blacktown in Sydney and has 36 electric trucks running from the depot round the Sydney region.

Some $20m of the $42m depot cost was funded by Arena, and the CEFC provided debt funding. TGE also runs 24 other E trucks from the site.

The Volvos have a range of about 250 km and vehicles at the depot, including ICE vehicles and electrics average 98 km/day. A depot next to large warehouses with a couple of MW of solar behind the meter might be even better, but how would I know.

It’s interesting to look at the evolution of the charging profile for the fleet at Bungaribee and the obvious thing that the more you use lunchtime power to charge, the better the economics, but that that’s when the vehicles are on the road.

Bungaribee depot charging by time of day. Source: TGE

Leaving aside the capital expenditure required for the charging depot the productivity economics are basically a function of capex vs fuel savings.

Capex is about double maybe more, but the fuel savings can be very substantial, maybe as much as 80%. The trucks have very strong regenerative braking impacts and arguably are well suited to the Sydney region with its moderate daily distances, ability to use the purpose built charging depot and temperate climate.

Why spend so much time on vehicle fleet decarbonisation? It’s because in a few years transport is likely to be Australia’s largest source of carbon emissions.

Transport a big emitter. Source: Heavy Vehicle Industry Association

And trucks are about 40% of estimated total transport emissions in 2030.

Transport emissions. Source: Heavy Vehicle Industry Association

To date it’s been hard enough to get any progress on cars, let alone trucks. Those slides were courtesy of Todd Hacking, CEO of the heavy vehicle association.

The trucking industry is very fragmented and consist of company owned vehicles and contractors ie lorry owner drivers (LODs). Barriers to entry are very low and from the movies I watch it can be a tough life, and the majority of trucks are in firms with 5 trucks or less. Cars in Australia are on average 12 years old but trucks last for 20 years.

However, truck ownership leases are for say 2-3 years and then new leases are struck. No matter what the Net present value of electrifying, which in this industry is called the “Total Cost of Ownership” (TCO) is, the high capex is a more purchase important than the fuel savings.

It’s often the case that the people that would most benefit from capex are the least able to afford it.

In any case the TCO is not that good in many cases. If you can’t immediately access a charge point at a well located charging depot it won’t happen. A carbon price would likely make the economics look better but that isn’t in prospect. Just as in the car industry the first requirement is enough charging infrastructure. To get the transport industry decarbonising requires confidence in the solution as well as appropriate economics.

So the question arises as to what policy is appropriate? Right now there is zero policy that impacts trucks. There are no fuel efficiency standards, no renewable fuel credits, no tax incentives that favour zero emissions trucks and so on.