Latest rules may reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but truckers raise concerns about charging infrastructure and costs.
The Biden administration recently announced a new regulation designed to increase electric or other zero emission heavy vehicle sales. The regulation sets updated national greenhouse gas pollution standards for commercial vehicles, such as freight trucks and buses, for model years 2027 through 2032. The revised standards are projected to help avoid 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and provide $13 billion in annualized net benefits to society related to public health, the climate, and savings for truck owners and operators, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“In finalizing these emissions standards for heavy-duty vehicles like trucks and buses, EPA is significantly cutting pollution from the hardest working vehicles on the road,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement.
“Building on our recently finalized rule for light- and medium-duty vehicles, EPA’s strong and durable vehicle standards respond to the urgency of the climate crisis by making deep cuts in emissions from the transportation sector.”
These recently announced “Phase 3” standards are a continuation of the EPA’s Heavy-Duty Phase 2 program from 2016 and will uphold that program’s flexible structure. The standards are technology neutral and performance-based, so manufacturers can choose what set of emissions control technologies they feel is best suited for them and their customers’ needs.
Available technologies include advanced internal combustion engine vehicles, hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. These new standards apply to heavy-duty vocational vehicles (such as delivery trucks, refuse haulers, public utility trucks, and transit, shuttle, and school buses) and tractors (such as day cabs and sleeper cabs on tractor-trailer trucks).
Businesses, truckers raise concerns over new pollution rules
These new standards could lead to 25 percent of long-haul trucks and 40 percent of medium sized trucks becoming non-polluting by 2023, but companies still have a lot to consider before shifting their fleets to electric.
Cost is perhaps the biggest consideration for businesses that use commercial vehicles. Electric trucks can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — two to three times more than a diesel truck. EV commercial vehicle prices could fall as production increases in the future and there could be fuel savings to be had, but there’s a trade-off. Electric trucks need large, heavy batteries that decrease how much cargo the vehicle can haul at one time, The New York Times reports.
There’s also the charging issue to consider. Electric commercial vehicles require more powerful chargers than passenger EVs. Getting such powerful commercial electric truck chargers in place may require upgraded and new equipment. Additionally, there currently aren’t enough EV chargers available that are capable of serving heavy-duty vehicles — just 5,000 in the U.S., according to the Engine Manufacturers Association.
The organization, which represents companies the build and create heavy-duty truck equipment, estimates that approximately 1 million of those chargers would need to be in place to serve the total number of electric commercial vehicles this new regulation projects there will be.
“If the infrastructures are not there, customers simply will not be able to operate zero emission vehicles,” Engine Manufacturers Association president Jed Mandel said.
The organization includes Daimler Truck, which owns Freightliner; Volvo Trucks; and Traton, a unit of Volkswagen that owns Navistar — three of the nation’s largest truck manufacturers. Those companies requested the E.P.A. to relax some requirements in the final version of the regulation, according to The New York Times.
The agency agreed to make some concessions—it reduced how quickly truck manufacturers had to comply with the rule in its early years. They will have to pick up their pace only after 2030.
“This is an ambitious goal, and there will be challenges across our industry to reach it,” Jon Mills, a spokesman for Cummins, an Indiana-based company that makes conventional truck engines and has started manufacturing electric versions told The New York Times.
Truckers themselves are concerned, however.
“This administration seems dead set on regulating every local Mom and Pop business out of existence with its flurry of unworkable environmental mandates,” Todd Spencer, president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers’ Association, which represents truck drivers said.
Meanwhile, Mike Nichols, a trucker based in Chippewa Falls, WI., owns an 18-wheeler which he uses to haul rice, sugar and grain. He said he would never buy an all-electric truck, even with government subsidies.
“They can’t haul as heavily,” he told The New York Times. “They can’t do as much work.”
Nichols also said he wasn’t sure there would be enough charging stations built to support long haul truckers. He acknowledged that he spends about $50,000 a year on diesel fuel, but imagines that electricity costs needed to charge a heavy-duty EV battery could potentially be just as much or even more than he’s currently spending.
“Their ambitions may be laudable, but they haven’t thought this through,” Nichols said.
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