China's Diesel Trucks Are Shifting To Electric (apnews.com) 79
Longtime Slashdot reader ukoda shares a report from the Associated Press: China is replacing its diesel trucks with electric models faster than expected, potentially reshaping global fuel demand and the future of heavy transport. In 2020, nearly all new trucks in China ran on diesel. By the first half of 2025, battery-powered trucks accounted for 22% of new heavy truck sales, up from 9.2% in the same period in 2024, according to Commercial Vehicle World, a Beijing-based trucking data provider. The British research firm BMI forecasts electric trucks will reach nearly 46% of new sales this year and 60% next year.
China's trucking fleet, the world's second-largest after the U.S., still mainly runs on diesel, but the landscape is shifting. Transport fuel demand is plateauing, according to the International Energy Agency and diesel use in China could decline faster than many expect, said Christopher Doleman, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Electric trucks now outsell LNG models in China, so its demand for fossil fuels could fall, and "in other countries, it might never take off," he said. [...]
The share of electrics in new truck sales, from 8% in 2024 to 28% by August 2025, has more than tripled as prices have fallen. Electric trucks outsold LNG-powered vehicles in China for five consecutive months this year, according to Commercial Vehicle World. While electric trucks are two to three times more expensive than diesel ones and cost roughly 18% more than LNG trucks, their higher energy efficiency and lower costs can save owners an estimated 10% to 26% over the vehicle's lifetime, according to research by Chinese scientists. "When it comes to heavy trucks, the fleet owners in China are very bottom-line driven," Doleman said.
China's trucking fleet, the world's second-largest after the U.S., still mainly runs on diesel, but the landscape is shifting. Transport fuel demand is plateauing, according to the International Energy Agency and diesel use in China could decline faster than many expect, said Christopher Doleman, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Electric trucks now outsell LNG models in China, so its demand for fossil fuels could fall, and "in other countries, it might never take off," he said. [...]
The share of electrics in new truck sales, from 8% in 2024 to 28% by August 2025, has more than tripled as prices have fallen. Electric trucks outsold LNG-powered vehicles in China for five consecutive months this year, according to Commercial Vehicle World. While electric trucks are two to three times more expensive than diesel ones and cost roughly 18% more than LNG trucks, their higher energy efficiency and lower costs can save owners an estimated 10% to 26% over the vehicle's lifetime, according to research by Chinese scientists. "When it comes to heavy trucks, the fleet owners in China are very bottom-line driven," Doleman said.
Re:Trucks booked as sold? (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is a real thing. One of the first sectors to move heavy equipment to electric was mining, now they have entire mines which are all-electric and mostly-automated. Driving a mining truck or running an excavator is pretty much no-brain work, jobs fit for robots. This guy lives and works in China and writes mostly about the business environment (with occasional digressions). All of his articles are accompanied by lots of links to other reading.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co... [substack.com]
The mining company deployed a fleet of one hundred fully autonomous electric trucks.
Huawei built a 5.5G network and designed algorithms specifically for open-pit coal mines, with localized maps. As a result, the smart trucks operate at 120% efficiency compared to human operators.
As more intelligent mines come online and electrify, enormous savings in fuel costs will be realized. Diesel fuel typically accounts for up to half of all operating costs for mining operations; mining trucks consume up to 100 liters (30 gallons) of fuel per hours, and overland fuel transport and storage in remote areas drive capital investment needs higher.
Re: Trucks booked as sold? (Score:2)
Re: Trucks booked as sold? (Score:2)
China's geology is really bad for petroleum production. A bad lot in the luck of the draw.
They are building a monster pipeline and rail system across Mongolia and Siberia to Russian reserves but it's a decadal project.
Electric transportation is a smart option for their situation. Their necessity has become their Mother of Invention and they are dominating the world in electric power systems innovation.
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The pipeline is for natural gas, which is extremely important not only for electrical generation but for making fertilizer.
Re:Trucks booked as sold? (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case it's just statistics that make things look good like all the hallucinations of Rob Jetten.
Yeah the Chinese EV rise is a complete myth. It's just a complete coincidence that transport based emissions are dropping, overall emissions have peaked, fuel use is declining despite an increase in the number of vehicles and higher traffic, and that for the first time this century Beijing had so little smog they could see the mountains.
Nothing at all to do with the "booking scandal" which showed that EVs are a myth rather than actually being an incredibly minor and brief quirk in a large industry.
Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
China has a lot of large cities, a lot of trucking is probably just inside those areas where an electric truck can really shine and where that lack of emissions really makes a difference.
It's still a huge country and I wonder if they rely on long haul over-the-road trucking as much as the USA does or if they offload a lot of that to rail.
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As a Norwegian, I'm shocked every time I go further south in Europe. The smell of gas and diesel in every city ...
After most folks have switched to electric cars here - I'm acutely aware of the difference when going abroad.
Even more so. (Score:4, Informative)
Searched internet, found info:
China, long-haul + shot-haul: ~70%
USA, long-haul + shot-haul: ~72%
China, rail transport: 20-22%
USA, rail transport: ~28%
Even with the long-haul and short-haul numbers combined, it's fairly clear that China is as reliant on long-haul trucking as the USA is. However, given the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, those numbers could shift.
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Why is doesn't China's rail + short & long haul trucking add up to 100%? Is the other 8% boat/car/airplane? If so how come the US number adds up to 100% ?
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Our rail cargo system in the USA is the envy of the world. It's precisely because we have chosen to skew our rail toward freight and away from passenger that we have such a terrible passenger rail system. Our passenger trains share track with freight, which delays our passenger trains as they must yield to freight. In Europe and Asia, freight yields to passenger, and in many cases (if not most) passenger trains have dedicated tracks.
Rail freight is also what killed barge traffic on our rivers, though we
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Our rail cargo system in the USA is the envy of the world.
I want the drugs you're having. Our rail cargo system is so broken that the only freight moving on it is not time sensitive or value. Most trains in the US? Unit trains of garbage or coal, military hardware, containers that already spent 8 weeks at sea getting here, aren't valuable and aren't needed on a deadline. The Class I railroads have done everything they can to kill off their own business for anything faster or more valuable. These same railroads have been actively closing routes to increase sca
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They do have a massive canal network (portions of it dating back over 1000 years) and a lot of coastal shipping. Whether it would add 8% I would have no idea but it would undoubtedly be larger than in the US.
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They do have a massive canal network (portions of it dating back over 1000 years) [...]
Let's put it like this: The Han canal was completed in 489 BCE, more than 2500 years ago, and the complete Grand Canal of China, which extends the Han canal from Bejing to Hangzhou to over about 1100 miles, was completed 609 AD.
Re: Even more so. (Score:2)
China might have more water logistics than the US but remember a ridiculous volume of goods travels through the Mississippi and great lakes. I'd guess the two nations are within earshot of each other there too.
Its interesting, for as much rightful shit as the US takes for not having more developed commuter rail it has a substantial freight rail network. In fact theres a lot of youtube videos arguing that fundamentally the rail differences between the US and Europe in particular are largely prioritization of
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Think of the traffic on the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers, then extend that throughout 2/3 of the country and make that transit 2-way rather than mostly from upstream to downstream. I'm pretty sure they're ahead.
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However, given the authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, those numbers could shift.
Yeah you can't trust USA numbers for anything these days. Oh wait yeah China's the discussion. It's hard to keep track with all the authoritarian governments fucking up statistics these days. What were the jobs numbers for October again?
Re: Even more so. (Score:1)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
China uses coal very differently than we do. They use like we use gas peaker plants. So most of their coal fleet is idle much of the time...and idle time is growing as their renewable segment grows.
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Europe has long distance EV trucks, and they are just fine. 1.2MW chargers too.
China developed very large EV battery packs years before we did though. They had busses with 400kWh packs back in the mid 2010s. It's actually a little surprising that it's taken them this long to electrify trucks.
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To be fair, he spouts complete utter tosh about nuclear too. Is there a subject where he *doesn't* spout complete utter tosh? I've not seen it
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There are strict rules for driving time and mandatory breaks. All over Europe, a driver must make a 45 minute break after every 4 h driving time and there is a hard limitation on driving time per day 9 h. Furthermore there is a limitation of 40 h of worktime per week. A Daimler eActros 600 semi has an average range of 700 - 800 km. At an average speed of 80 km/h, you drive ca. 300 km in 4 hours and recharge about 250 km at 300 kW in that 45 minutes break. In most countries in western and central Europe, the
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Addendum:
In most european countries there is road charge for trucks on highways and most of the discount that charge for electric trucks. In Germany this charge amounts to 0.35€/km and it is discounted to zero until end of 2031.
At 200 working days per year and an average travel distance of 600 km/day, this amounts to an annual advantage of 42000€ per truck and per year compared to a diesel powered one.
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And that's plain wrong. Long distance trucking in Europe mainly means transporting goods from the large harbors in the Mediterranean (Genoa, Piraeus) and at the Northern Sea (Rotterdam, Hamburg) to the large industrial centers and back. Additionally, trucks are transporting raw materials, furniture and similar goods from Eastern Europe to the West and machines and machine parts to the East. This means cro
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You are, of course, completely correct about all this. But he's also incorrect about driving times within European countries. The UK is hardly very big, but it'll take 7 hours on a good day to drive from Glasgow to London, nine from Aberdeen, 5 from Plymouth, 6 from Penzance, 6 from Holyhead to catch the ferry to Northern Island, etc.
These are car journey times: it'll actually take much longer in a truck, because they're subject to lower speed limits and mandatory rest breaks.
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Nope. European long haul truckers driver every bit as far as American ones do. Thousands of km. Do you understand how vast Europe really is? Watch s few of electric trucker's videos. He did a 5000 km trip recently.
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> Pick a random European nation and tell me the longest drive a citizen would have to make to get to their nation's capital city.
Norway.
Driving from Hammerfest to Oslo will take you 23 hours if you drive via Finland and Sweden.
If you keep within Norway, approximately 32 hours.
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We have a company in Australia [januselectric.com.au] taking a different approach. They recondition truck diesel trucks due for a rebuild. The range is about 500km, which is doesn't work in Australia as we have about 1000km between major cities. So instead of recharging they replace the battery with a forklift, which takes a few minutes. They have built replacement stations along the east coast of Australia, which is a road about 4,000km long.
You can read what they say about the comparative cost of diesel and EV trucks on the
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You wouldn't be allowed in entire Europe to do so! We call everything above 3.5 t a truck and there are strict rules forcing you to drive no more than 4 hours without mandatory breaks and no more than 9 hours a day. After that 9 hours, you are oblige to do a 9 hour rest. On sundays, you are not allowed to drive the truck anyway.
That are the rules for driving. On top of that are work hour rules, that limit the weekly working times to 50 hours and a biweekly maximum of 90 hours. and apply to all work includin
More Trucks or Replacement (Score:1)
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These are replacements for sure. Commercial trucks wear out fast, or at least the engines do. Not unlike taxis I guess. Just the shear distance they travel. Electric will have a longevity advantage here.
The question will be, are they all short-haul replacements? If they're long-haul too then that's quite amazing.
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Commercial trucks wear out fast, or at least the engines do.
AI Tells Me
A semi-truck can typically last around 750,000 miles with proper maintenance, and some can even reach the million-mile mark. The average semi-truck travels about 45,000 miles per year
It also says the typical over the road driver puts on 100,000 miles per year. (that would be 2000 hours averaging 50 mph which seems reasonable). But the real question is whether demand for trucks is growing faster than the sales of new electric trucks.
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Okay, what your numbers are basically saying is unless the country's truck fleet is younger than 10 years, or there is some extraordinary reason for a change in fleet size, you're 99% measuring replacements by examining purchases.
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what your numbers are basically saying is unless the country's truck fleet is younger than 10 years, or there is some extraordinary reason for a change in fleet size, you're 99% measuring replacements by examining purchases.
No, I don't think the numbers show that. The problem with the numbers in the original is that they are percentages of sales. It tells you nothing about whether overall sales increased or decreased, just the proportion between the two types. Its perfectly possible for both to have increased or decreased, but EV sales increased more or decreased less. In order for an EV sale to replace a diesel sale, diesel sales would have had to decline while EV sales were going up - not just a change in the proportion of s
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Read some of the other posts then. It's all economics. Electric is a money saver. The old trucks may even be getting retired early.
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This guy is absolutely stuck on the idea that cars and trucks never reach end of life, and that all new EVs are simply added to national fleets without any ICE vehicles being retired. It's obviously bonkers, and completely at odds with the obvious fact that we have scrap yards and know fleet sizes and demand isn't infinite for vehicles, etc. But he's absolutely insistent on this weird belief.
Back in the real world, we have obvious evidence that transitions happen, old vehicles get retired and new vehicles c
Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Makes sense (Score:2)
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This is correct, semis are known as artics, lorries or trucks outside the US
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They're sometimes known as wagons, too
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That's exactly what happens in Europe on distinct relations, the railway operators hav specialised wagons for quick loading and unloading bare trailers.
The problem is, that in the last 30 to 40 years, the street transport has been preferred in politics over the railway and so the rails were neglected. Only exception is Switzerland, who have rails into even the smalest village as far as feasible.
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In Europe, semis that go into town will likely as not have sleeper compartments. The cabover style makes this feasible
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Electric Trucker (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want a picture of how electric trucks can work when there's some infrastructure, watch some of YouTuber "Electric Trucker" videos. He's doing long haul trucking with electric. All across Europe and up to the UK and even to central Turkey. Fascinating. To head off the comments about how the US is so vast compared to Europe I should say this guy drives up to 800 km a day and one of his longest trips was 5000km. So definitely comparable to the longest distances trucks drive in the US. Obviously a difference is the population is more dense so there's more infrastructure. But very interesting and as someone with a commercial license I'm a little jealous of those trucks. Smooth constant power with Regen makes for a great experience.
It's interesting to see how this will work out for lots of places in China.
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Oh and I should add the electric trucks he's driving are the equivalent of our north American class 8 trucks. 40 tonnes GVW (with a few extra tonnes allowed for batteries), so the same as most long-haul box trailer trucks. His trucks are 400-600 kwh depending on the model, and he averages around or just under 1 kwh/km. Charging takes 45 minutes or more, which he does during his mandatory breaks. And often charges overnight. Lots of things I'd never think of such as the fact the fuller the battery the le
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Actually for many such routes a solar farm and batteries could do the job instead of new cables. I saw some pictures one Tesla already did for one of their desert based charging
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In the US, you can drive 800 km as see little more than asphalt and coyotes between the beginning and end.
Sure, you CAN. But the long haul trucks aren't driving those routes. They're driving the Interstates, where there is a massive service industry with regular truck stops to support their needs.
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In the US, you can drive 800 km as see little more than asphalt and coyotes between the beginning and end
Bullshit. I live in the western US and have regularly driven through some of the least-populated areas of the country, but I've never seen an area you can go 500 miles without encountering any infrastructure. You might be able to accomplish it if you take careful note of where the truck stops are and go out of your way to avoid them, but on any realistic route you'll encounter truck stops -- if not towns -- at least every 150 miles.
As for charging infrastructure, if you stay on the interstates I don't
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Also of note is that the obvious way to build EV charging for trucks is with batteries and, where there's decent insolation, solar canopies. Reduces opex, reduces the size of the draw on the local grid, etc
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Probably much better in hilly terrain both up and downhill than diesel trucks.
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Electric trucks and other commercial vehicles have another big advantage over fossil - you can use them indoors with no risk of gassing everyone to death. Drive them right into the warehouse, or the mine. Do your loading and unloading in a covered, heated environment.
No issues with running refrigeration and other electrical items like lifts either, because you have a massive battery and can plug it in to charge if needed.
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For your brother's sake, along with the sakes of all the other workers, let's hope there was some meaningful regulatory oversight in how that infrastructure was built. It's not as though US industry has ever really given two shits about the health of workers, whether farm laborers, meatpackers, or miners. And particulates are pretty fucking bad for you, especially PM2.5s emitted during incomplete combustion cycles.
Economics + architecture + no cultural barriers (Score:5, Interesting)
That’s what makes the difference in China. I will use the term trucks in the global sense, ie what Americans call semis. In the UK, a semi means something quite different
Economics — opex is much more important than capex for trucking TCO and ROI
Architecture — truck ICE trains are really big and heavy, so the weight differential is smaller than you’d expect, plus the ladder frame construction and large axles of trucks means there’s lots of space for a battery that adds structural rigidity and lowers the centre of gravity, plus motors on the axles. Auke Hoekstra has a presentation on this (it also covers the economics)
Cultural barriers — There’s no fetishisation of trucking as the epitome of manliness, as there is in the US. Chinese truck drivers and fleet operators aren’t emotionally invested in the roar of a diesel engine. In fact, Chinese truck drivers value the quiet operations, lack of fumes, smooth accelerations, and lack of gears provided by EVs (there’s interesting interviews with Chinese truckers about their experiences with EV trucks on YT)
Good riddance (Score:2)
I was in Beijing twice back in 2007-2008 for work and got to experience their monstrous, 6-8 wheel, diesel trucks belching smog everywhere. It was such a clean city at ground level, but the worst smog. You couldn't see more than a couple of blocks on most days, and it wasn't fog.
China is desperately trying to (Score:2)
remove itself from oil consumption, they import ~80% of their oil. When it does they can go to war with whomever they want.
Aussie mine (Score:2)
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There's a Swiss one that works somewhat like what you described, but I don't know of the Aussie one.
https://www.greencarreports.co... [greencarreports.com]