With Tesla Semi and eCascadia coming, US electric truck sales are going to increase to over 54,000 by 2025

With several new major players like Tesla Semi and eCascadia coming to electrify trucks, US electric truck sales are now expected to increase to over 54,000 units by 2025, according to Wood Mackenzie.

Passenger vehicles are being slowly electrified, and some might be thinking that the same thing will happen to commercial trucks.

But it is actually likely to happen much faster.

Commercial electric trucks are benefiting from years of electric powertrain improvements in the passenger car sector and decision making is also vastly different than at the consumer level.

In other words, if it makes financial sense to buy electric trucks, fleet manager will not hesitate to do it.

With a few more class 8 electric trucks coming to market soon, like Tesla Semi and the Freightliner eCasdadia, Wood Mackenzie is expecting a quick ramp-up.

The firm is out with a new report predicting 54,000 electric trucks in the US within the next 5 years:

There were just over 2,000 electric trucks on US roads at the end of 2019. This stock is expected to grow to over 54,000 by 2025, according to new analysis from Wood Mackenzie.

Kelly McCoy, the research analyst behind the report, commented:

Compared to passenger electric vehicle (EV) and electric bus penetration levels, the electric truck market is still in its infancy. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MDV/HDV) are the second-largest contributor to US transportation emissions, but much of the emissions reduction efforts thus far have centered on new diesel technologies and hybrids rather than pure electrification.

McCoy highlights some issues with charging the massive batteries that will go into these trucks, but she also highlights plenty of opportunities to adapt charging for cargo trucks, like at the docks while loading and unloading and during extended parked times.

The analyst also points to the financial benefits being higher, thanks to government incentives:

Fleet electrification provides operators with many financial and environmental benefits on its own due to lower fuel and maintenance costs and zero tailpipe emissions. Support from policymakers and utilities is just getting off the ground, and fleet operators willing to test this new technology can take advantage of incentive and pilot programs to advance their own electrification goals.

Earlier this year, electric trucks got a real boost from California with a new zero-emission truck program for the state that is likely to spread to other states.

With most electric trucks on the US market so far being mostly electric reuse trucks and short-range trucks, new electric models, especially long-range class 8 trucks like Tesla Semi and the eCascadia, need to hit the market in order to ramp up.

Freightliner has delivered a few eCascadia electric trucks to customers already as part of its test fleet, but volume production is a few years away.

Tesla is currently using two electric truck prototypes for its own operations and it plans to ramp that up by the end of the year and start customer deliveries next year.