While the consumer switch to EVs is accelerating, logistics software company Adiona Tech says the electrifying Australia’s truck fleet offers a much greater decarbonisation opportunity.
The finding was published in a report called Connected Thinking (PDF here) earlier this month.
Adiona said electrifying just ten small delivery trucks would eliminate emissions equivalent to 56 households purchasing electric cars.
But the heavy vehicle fleet offers the greatest opportunity: articulated trucks are only 1% of the vehicles on our roads, but they produce 15% of all emissions, Adiona Tech study found.
The company says the government’s National Electric Vehicle Strategy, released in April, needs to prioritise commercial fleets, particularly the least fuel-efficient vehicles, rather than passenger cars.
Adiona Tech CEO Richard Savoie said:
“The electrification of the Australian fleet needs to run in parallel to other transport programs designed to reduce emissions, lower congestion and traffic, and make cities more liveable.
“Organisations like Transport for NSW are trying to reduce total kilometres driven, especially by passenger cars, while global transport agencies are committed to converting car drivers to public transport, cycling, and walking with an emphasis on creating 30-minute cities.”
However, an articulated truck covers six times the distance of a passenger car each year, uses 40 times the fuel, and produces 50 times the CO2.
Unless action is taken, Adiona Tech believes, things will only get worse. The World Economic Forum predicts delivery vehicle numbers to rise by 36% in just the world’s top-100 cities by 2030 (PDF here).
“Australia is already behind every other developed nation on electric vehicles, and while we’re playing catch up, we can’t forget the biggest emitters on the road,” said Savoie said.
“The National EV strategy is a start, but we need low emissions zones yesterday. We need much bigger financial incentives for businesses to switch to more expensive EVs. Current grants barely bridge the gap. They are not sufficient to change peoples’ minds and change Australia’s roads.”
This post originally had the headline “Australia Needs To Electrify Its Heavy Vehicles ‘Yesterday’, Says Adiona Tech”.
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They would say that, they want the job. Has anyone spoken to long distance drivers and fleet owners regarding the cost of new prime movers.
They’re a software logistics company not a heavy vehicle EV maker. I think they are probably just reporting what their software tells them.
Of course. This is a long term development which has been going on in Europe and the US for some time and is openly discussed in trucking circles. You can already buy EV trucks for both short and long haul and more and more makers are releasing EV models. As usual, China is well ahead of the rest of the world with many models, big and small, available.
EV trucks for long haul are already doing plenty of kms there largely between logistics warehouses on standardised routes – and a number in US and Europe too. Trucks can bear the weight of large batteries and batteries can be charged from power developed by large solar arrays onsite. Short haul routes (in cities etc) are easier to manage as the trucks typically do more limited hours per day driving.
It is really a new market yet so numbers of trucks available are limited and there are fewer companies with the logistics support required. Others are adopting a “wait and see” approach.
As for cost of prime movers, it is not as big a cost component in fleet operations as you might think. As more trucks become available and companies want to avail themselves of the significant operating cost savings available EVs will be added as part of normal fleet turnover.
What does Savoie mean when he says “We need much bigger financial incentives for businesses to switch to more expensive EVs”?
Is he calling for taxpayers to fund companies buying new vehicles? Is he calling for government sanctions or fines for companies which don’t voluntarily change over? Or is he calling for customers to pay far more for products as companies scrabble to recoup the cost of unplanned and very expensive new vehicles?
Given the current cost of living crisis and concerns about a recession or depression, his concern is extremely poorly timed.
Not sure the climate cares about arcane things like human economic cycles. Or anthing for that matter – it’s just applied physics. I think the larger concern is just around practicality. There’s little doubt that decarbonising heavy vehicles is a high priority and offers far greater benefits than the passenger fleet alone but where are all these vehicles going to come from? The main incentive I can think of is urgently introducing fuel efficiency standards. The economics will sort themselves out.
The size and subsequent weight of batteries required to power a B Double reduces the payload to the point where it is not economic.
Until new battery technologies emerge that can reduce the weight substantially, heavy transport will stay with their current fuel source.
Lindsay Smith,
“Until new battery technologies emerge that can reduce the weight substantially, heavy transport will stay with their current fuel source.”
It seems to me the “current fuel source” looks increasingly precarious for Australia (& for the world) in the coming years (NOT decades).
On ABC TV’s “Insiders programme broadcast on Apr 30, David Speers interviewed the Defence Minister Richard Marles, including this exchange:
SPEERS: “So, in the next three years, the worry is our trade routes, our fuel supplies could be blocked by China?”
MARLES: “Well, first, it’s not just the three years- it is that, but I think it’s beyond that. So, we are thinking about this over the next three, the next ten years and beyond. But the point that we’re really making is that when you look at the way in which great power contest is playing out, and particularly in our region, you look at that military build up and you look at our exposure to that through a much greater economic connection to the world, we are much more vulnerable to coercion than we’ve ever been before, and we need to be thinking about the way in which we posture our defence force to deal with that.”
Matt’s comprehensive assessment of Australia’s fuel import vulnerabilities, published 9 May 2023 is at:
https://crudeoilpeak.info/another-3-year-warning-on-australias-fuel-imports-vulnerability
The US produced 66% of the world’s oil at the end of WW2, & it’s now about 17% (due primarily to the uptick from ‘tight’ oil from about 2008).
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1648171251020574720
Most oil producing countries have passed peak production.
Saudi Arabia & Russia are now looking like they too have passed peak production.
And US ‘tight’ oil production seems to be at peak or declining in all but the Permian Basin.
The era of cheap & abundant crude oil & petroleum fuels has ended forever.
I don’t think batteries will do it.. Possibly H2 but very expensive.
We could use overhead power and use steel tracks to reduce friction. Trains!
Put the EV trucks on trains to do the last 5-10km. Even diesel trains are 4X efficient than trucks but we need to plan for electric trains.
please note the b-double trial between syd bris. battery something like 2mmtr x1.2 battery change less than 5 min via fork lift.
CAN WE PLEASE have discussion relevent to what is working NOW
John Mitchell,
“Not sure the climate cares about arcane things like human economic cycles. Or anthing for that matter – it’s just applied physics.”
Yep. Don’t do enough to mitigate human-induced warming, and that warming will drive relentlessly on.
What are some of these consequences?
Per the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper titled Global Warming in the Pipeline, on page 33:
And on page 34:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04474
I’d suggest introducing fuel efficiency standards is now TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE!
I’d suggest our economics won’t sort themselves out.
Only an emergency response akin to a ‘wartime footing’ now has any chance of success.
Geoff, let’s hope not all of the WAIS slips into the oceans this century, as that’s just over 8m sealevel rise, not counting the myriad cubic km from Greenland on top. But the Americam military’s high middle estimate of +2m seems to me to be the minimum facing us, if we work very hard to mitigate. If we do top +2C by 2050, then already accelerating CH4 emissions from arctic permafrost have probably neared their tipping point? Are they still excluded from global heating models?
As long as Thwaites Glacier holds, we are reprieved, I figure. But it is steadily retreating, especially underneath, and pretty much has to precipitate a quantum jump in WAIS ice loss before long, with concomitant acceleration of sealevel rise.
The 100+ million drowned-city refugees will move inland, reducing the length of transmission lines needed, and new construction can be much better insulated, reducing energy needs. Cost and resource constraints will however pack them in like sardines – except as mitigated by population reduction due to aging populations and low birth rates in the developed world. By the time we go on a war footing, high gumboots will be a fashion item, available in fire-engine red, perhaps.
I’m about to sell at 200m altitude, but have checked that the tree change only brings me down to 64m. That’ll see me out. I convinced my brother to sell at only 5m, a decade ago. He’s on top of a hill.There’ll be zippy EV boats as well, in time.
The ABC report that it may be the ash from the Black Summer bushfires which precipitated the triple La Nina does raise concerns for this summer or the next. Didn’t they double our national CO2 emissions for the year?
China and India are the elephants in the room – it makes little difference what Australia do.
If we want the biggest effect, we should pay China to produce another Hualong one or Hualong two reactor instead of using another coal plant.
They can make one in 5-years for the former and 4 years for the latter.
They produces 1.1GW, so about 9,000 GWh per year and as coal produces 1000tonne CO2 per GW that is 9,000,000 tonnes of CO2 saved.
Argentina paid $8B for one, similar to Snowy 2.0 which may only save half the amount at 5,400,000 tonnes.
The Hulong reactor price is about $12 billion Australian. Its operation and maintenance cost is likely to come to at least several Australian cents per kilowatt-hour. The lowest cost solar was bid in at around 3.4 cents per kilowatt-hour last year. That’s likely to be less than the O&M cost of the reactor. Australian rooftop solar is effectively much cheaper as it avoids distribution costs. So you could buy solar capacity equal to its energy output and over 24 hours of storage for the cost of the reactor plus O&M. So that’s not a good idea.
The Bruce Nuclear reactor has produced over 1,500 Terawatt-hours of electricity. I would say that it’s without storage but Ontario has a pumped hydro system at Niagara Falls that ‘recharges’ at night in summer.
If it wasn’t for summer tourism restrictions on minimum flow over the falls, that storage system could be redundant.
At 3.4 cents per KW-h that’s over 50 billion dollars worth of electricity generated by 2018, and they plan to run it until 2064. And it’s about the size of 5 Hualong units. But it needs little or no storage.
The economics of solar at a high ratio seem to depend heavily on storage and on time shifting of usage where possible. That cost seems to never be mmentioned.
The wholesale cost of solar at 10 O’clock in the morning at a solar farm in the middle of nowhere isn’t important if no-one needs it right then. It seems to me that daytime EV charging at work is a big part of the answer, 5 out of 7 days.
Dave,
“…it makes little difference what Australia do.”
Data indicates otherwise. Australia is a major fossil fuel producer – in 2021, was the 4th largest coal producer at 7.4% global share (12.43 exajoules) & 7th largest fossil gas producer at 3.6% global share (5.30 exajoules). What Australia does matters.
See BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy-2022 – a new edition is due on 26 Jun 2023.
“If we want the biggest effect, we should pay China to produce another Hualong one or Hualong two reactor instead of using another coal plant.”
Per the World Nuclear Industry Status Report-2022, Figure 11: Delays for Units Started Up 2019–2021, for China:
* Fuqing-5 (type Hualong One) : expected 4.5 years, actual 5.6 years;
* Hongyanhe-5 (type ACPR-1000): expected 5.8 years, actual 6.2 years;
* Shidao Bay 1-1 (type HTR-PM): expected 5.0 years, actual 9.1 years;
* Taishan-2 (type EPR): expected 4.5 years; actual 9.2 years;
* Tianwan-5 (type ACPR-1000): expected 4.6 years; actual 4.6 years;
* Tianwan-6 (type ACPR-1000): expected 4.7 years; actual 4.7 years;
* Yangjiang-6 (type ACPR-1000): expected 4.7 years; actual 5.5 years.
WNISR-2022 states (on page 54):
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2022-.html
Add in planning, licensing/approvals, design, procurement, site preparation, and for experienced nuclear power countries it will still take 10+ years to get any reactor operational. See FIG. 8: Typical durations for the main contracts.
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1537_web.pdf
For inexperienced countries, like Australia, I’d suggest 15-20 years to have an operational reactor is highly optimistic.
Nuclear is FAR TOO SLOW to deploy to rapidly reduce GHG emissions NOW.
Well we already subsidise miners and farmers for their dirty diesel fuel with a rebate. I like many other taxpayers, already subsidise EV and ICE cars with the tax benefits of salary packaged cars not actually used for genuine work purposes. I could go on and on about the various incentives ie subsidies we provide for less desirable outcomes (unless you are the person getting the subsidy).
However, there is a very beneficial outcomes to providing incentives or penalties for people and businesses to speed up their purchase of EVs – it helps us clean up our atmosphere and reduce global warming, ie protecting people and our planet. We only have one of those.
Is it a subsidy when the tax credit is because the fuel isn’t used on Australian roads? Isn’t it actually just avoiding unjust taxation?
I agree your point about salary packaged cars – and isn’t it interesting how all the taxpayer funded government cars are all the very expensive high end brands and models!
Salary packaged cars are taxed heavily in Canada. And like Australia there’s a fuel tax rebate for off road fuel,.
And of course jetliners and cargo ship operators never pay the road tax in the first place.
But one thing we do have is a ‘carbon tax’ on all fossil fuel at consumption. Except that electricity generators only pay the difference between the CO2 output of the best CCGT unit running on methane, and the output of *their* plant running on coal, or a single cycle.
So in essence, electricity generation is subsidized, there’s a $5,000 subsidy on qualifying new EVs, a subsidy on installing public chargers, and a road tax holiday for EVs. So there’s no crying ‘foul’ over imagined petroleum subsidies.
“Is it a subsidy when the tax credit is because the fuel isn’t used on Australian roads? Isn’t it actually just avoiding unjust taxation?”
Call it what you like. The money that people pay for fuel (generally diesel) doesn’t go to pay for roads – it goes into a great big taxation bucket from which road funding is drawn. I don’t believe that any of the money is actually hypothecated for road funding, despite all the theatrics associated with the tax collection (“building better roads”). Currently only a little over 50% of the fuel excise goes back in to transport infrastructure (https://www.drive.com.au/news/billions-in-fuel-tax-spent-on-roads-survey/)
If just over 1/2 of the fuel excise goes to transport infrastructure, then why should some people/companies pay $0 fuel excise at all?
If we follow your logic they should at least be paying 1/2 of the standard fuel excise.
While we clearly need to electrify our delivery trucks in the very near future, I’m not sure that ‘yesterday’ was the time to do it. Batteries are improving rapidly and those who buy the current generation of cars and trucks are likely to find that they depreciate rapidly once newer batteries (like the ones recently announced by CATL) are available.
Truck operators will need to do the maths. It may be that even with current batteries, the savings on diesel are enough to make the switch viable. But it is not the time to rush in without thought. The future is looking very bright, but it is not quite here yet.
I’ve always been under the impression that hydrogen was a more probable future for heavy trucking than e-battery. Please see this link re hydrogen trucking in Europe:
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/the-first-hydrogen-trucks-are-rolling-in-europe/
And the refuelling time for hydrogen beats battery hands down……..
Burning H2 in ICE is a nonsense as it has poor efficiency taking 4x more fuel for the same task compared to battery-electric. Fuel cells can make it half-better but these are expensive and problematic. First use of fuel cell was to power Apollo mission, and then what? No progress at all. Finally refueling is problematic. Is not only storing H2, fact that it has to be compressed a lot or that it will happily explode in wide range of concentration. It is lack of infrastructure at all. Electricity is everywhere and widely used, H2 is nowhere. It is a lot easier and quicker to adopt power from electricity grid than build pipes for h2 around continent or build massive storage in every place then keep pumping in-out tankers wasting a lot just to run the pumps. As alternative it would be a lot better and easier to use CNG instead either for ICE or with steam reformer for fuel cells. However, no-one wants to while it is available as conversion since 30 years ago. For reducing Co2 it is nearly as good, as burning H2 in ICE engine.
The whole point of making H2 from surplus renewable electricity is that (within reason) any use of the electricity is better than the 100% waste of curtailment, because the fuel cost is always zero.
Fuel cells still have uses. Allis-Chalmers even built a fuel cell electric tractor in the 1950’s. There is a Japanese company making fuel cell micro-CHP systems for home use.
Electricity is widely used, but not everywhere, and solar PV electricity isn’t universally available every day, or every day of the year. If you expect to charge an EV from solar in Canada, you’ll be fine through June and July, a bit disappointed in October, and pretty much staying put for December and January.
Yeah, CNG buses are running in major cities, and one U.S. waste management company runs a fleet of thousands of garbage trucks on landfill gas alone.
We’ll need a cheap source of hydrogen for industry, too, pretty much forever, which is longer than coal will last.
I think that we will need all the renewable electricity, battery, and H2 production we can possibly muster up, to conserve the oil and gas that’s left, for the things we currently only know how to do with oil and gas.
Some of the arguments against making hydrogen (i.e. it uses water) are pretty weak tea, and some of the arguments the other way (LaVO has installed working battery + H2 systems run on residential solar) look pretty goid.
Having just attended the Smart Energy Expo in Sydney, as well as All Energy and recent energy storage forums, the overarching emphasis needs to be that we just get on with, quickly, with what is already at hand.
Hydrogen might come but is horribly inefficient. There’s no good reason we shouldn’t be recycling the existing fleet of trucks we already have doing the job right now.
https://www.januselectric.com.au/ is ticking a lot of boxes. Faster refuelling than anything. Grid services and solar only charging with a fleet of changeover batteries. Readily upgradeable when new batteries arrive. What’s not to like?
Why not send more heavy freight by rail? Could even electrify more of it. Would have to be much cheaper than replacing all trucks with EVs.There would be added bonus of less trucks on road.
Hi everyone, this is Richard from Adiona.
Great to see all of the debate here!
Just to clarify, nowhere in the report did I say “yesterday”. That’s been misquoted by the blog owner.
Secondly, there is much more context including our support of certain H2 applications for long haul, clarification on the types of subsidies and taxes that we think work based on global evidence, and the need to reduce overall km.
I encourage you to read the entire report and reach out to me if you like.
https://www.adionatech.com/insights
Thanks again for caring and taking the time to comment and debate.
-Rich
Thanks Richard, we certainly don’t want to misquote anyone – apologies. I’ve changed the headline from “yesterday” to ASAP.