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Taking into account a broader perspective on the environmental impact of the life cycle of a commercial vehicle, considering different types of powertrains, a Chinese team of scientists has concluded that a hybrid powertrain may constitute the lowest wheighted environmental impact, while it showed the best total cost of ownership for some use cases. Total cost of ownership is a factor which is often disregarded but, in reality, the single most important one for a fleet owner’s choice of vehicle, thus being a crucial factor in the transition towards lower carbon emission transportation.

Considering the limitations of the current charging infrastructure and battery supply, replacing the current heavy-duty diesel trucks with only fully electric ones may prove to be a decarbonisation path too ambitious. Having to provide charging stations capable of charging batteries with hundreds of kilowatt hours reasonably fast everywhere to effectively support a growing percentage of fully electric long-haul trucks is a huge task, that combined with the decarbonisation of the electricity grid could slow down the emission reduction and efficiency of road transport.

Hybrid electric trucks put less stress on charging infrastructure and battery supply and allow for a cheaper and less contrained path of implementation of these technologies into road transport, while also contributing significantly to GHG emissions reduction and depending on circumstances even providing an improved TCO due to fuel savings and lower truck prices.

Read more: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2023.103661