
HONG KONG — Battery-powered electric trucks driving long-distance routes from Shenzhen are more cost-effective than those powered by diesel fuel, according to an expert from a think tank.
A pilot programme completed last year in the city showed that trucks that run on batteries beat diesel-fuelled vehicles in terms of total cost of ownership if their annual mileage exceeded 60,000 kilometres, said Xie Haiming, the director of Shenzhen Xieli New Energy and Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Centre, a think tank. The total cost of ownership is the acquisition costs plus operating expenses over a vehicle's useful life.
"With the sharp decline in battery costs, which drove down the procurement costs of electric trucks by around 30% by year-end compared to 2023, even some [driving] shorter routes would be competitive against diesel trucks this year," he said in an interview.
Previously, the high cost of electric trucks could not be offset by their energy cost savings, which turned some buyers off.
Xie advises Shenzhen's municipal transport bureau on scaling up electric-truck deployment in the city. Shenzhen, a large tech hub in southern China that borders Hong Kong, was the first city in the world to fully electrify its public bus and taxi fleets. He is also helping the government design pilot programmes for routes between Shenzhen and other cities in the Greater Bay Area, like Dongguan, Guangzhou and in the future, Hong Kong.
"Freight trucks in Shenzhen, which predominantly ply routes to the industrial cities of Dongguan and Huizhou, will be a key growth driver for vehicle electrification," he said.
The Guangdong provincial government is seeking to set up a number of zero-emission freight corridors in the bay area plan, as part of its decarbonisation and clean energy initiatives, he said.
In addition to its public buses and taxis, 87% of Shenzhen's garbage collection trucks and 24 to 30% of its dump trucks and lorries are electric, Xie said. Lorries and cargo vans make up about 13% of the city's electric vehicle (EV) fleet of just over a million.
Last year, more than 40 enterprises and institutions in Shenzhen, with the support of the government, conducted a pilot programme for electric-truck deployment on routes between the city and Dongguan and Huizhou, he said.
It involved 38 heavy truck models from eight vehicle makers, 10 fleet operators, major charging-facility companies and international firms that ship cargo. Around 142 sets of data were collected on a number of metrics so that the total cost of ownership over five years could be assessed.
"We hope to learn from the experience from small scale pilots by multiple companies across multiple application settings," Xie said. "We will make some suggestions for improvements and then aim to replicate the experience in other parts of the [Greater Bay Area] and other parts of China."
One challenge identified by the pilot programme is that insufficient recharging facilities for trucks meant that drivers had to travel longer distances than diesel vehicles to do the same job.
"To operate 100 kilometres of cargo transport mileage, it would require the driver to run on average an extra 10km to recharging facilities," he said. "This is the biggest immediate challenge that needs to be tackled to scale up."
To roll out cross-border electric truck routes between Hong Kong and the mainland, authorities need to align technical standards for battery charging and build charging facilities that are compliant with mainland and Hong Kong regulations, he said.
While the energy transition for trucks requires substantial time and investment on infrastructure, interim solutions like renewable diesel made from plant waste and used cooking oil can fill part of the gap, said Tony Kwok, director of Hong Kong and Macau fuel sales at ExxonMobil.
The company launched Hong Kong's first renewable diesel product for road transport in August. Its life cycle greenhouse gas emission is estimated to be 15.4% lower than that of conventional diesel, ExxonMobil said.