While some companies are making promises, other companies are building hybrid and electric semi trucks. In fact, more than 231,000 electrified work trucks rolled off assembly lines 2025 – and that’s just in China!
China’s New Energy Vehicle (NEV) truck sales exploded in 2025, with a total for new NEV registrations (a designation that includes battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and extended-range electric trucks) reached 231,100 units for the year – a massive, 182% (!) increase over 2024.
The big numbers don’t stop there. In December alone, ~45,300 new HD NEVs were registered, capturing 54% of the entire new heavy-duty truck market for the month and showing a 198% year-over-year increase YoY and a 62% month-over-month jump from November.
Specialist Chinese industry website CV World points to government policy as a potential driver of the increases. There was a phase-out of a national trade-in subsidy for commercial vehicles and widespread anticipation of new NEV purchase tax costs coming in 2026, both of which could have helped drive demand as companies pulled ahead their replacement schedules to take advantage of the subsidy.
It’s all about TCO
While smart government policy certainly helped, the HDEV market has seen healthy growth on its own due to the trucks’ objectively lower total cost of ownership, with CATL’s commercial vehicle sales director, Xia Nan, citing that an NEV truck can save fleet operators up to 1.2 million yuan (about 165,000 USD) over a ten-year life cycle compared to a diesel equivalent.
The charging infrastructure to support this scale of electrification is also advancing, with both high-speed charging and battery swap station networks for heavy trucks coming online to address downtime concerns.
The market itself is also maturing rapidly. A 2025 ICCT report notes that the top five manufacturers of zero-emission heavy trucks (XCMG, SANY, FAW, Shacman, and Yutong) already command 61% of the HDEV segment, a concentration mirroring the 75% share the top five diesel truck makers hold in their own market.
“This suggests that the market for zero-emission heavy-duty trucks has reached a similar level of maturity as the market for internal combustion engine trucks,” CV World authors concluded. “With leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) dominating an increasing share of the market.”
At the same time, newer players like Windrose Technology and Pony.ai are helping define the next phase of the heavy truck market, with Windrose focusing on Class 8-equivalent OTR trucks as Pony.ai targets convoy-style autonomy – all signals that China’s electric truck boom is no longer limited to short-haul or urban use cases, but increasingly targets global freight applications.
Other markets reported more than 90,000 zero-emission semi truck sales in the first half of 2025, with US ZEV sales amounting to a disappointing 200 units in the same time period.
SOURCES: CV World, via CNEVPost, Electrive.
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