The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) published a study on the necessary public and private investment needed to support a fleet of mostly electric trucks with a small fleet of hydrogen trucks to handle long distance transportation [1]Minjares, Ray, Felipe Rodriguez, Arijit Sen, and Caleb Braun. “Infrastructure to Support a 100% Zero-Emission Tractor-Trailer Fleet in the United States by 2040.” The International Council on … Continue reading. This project modifies this study to apply for a fleet of fully electric trucks, as in the proposal, handling long distance transport using catenary rather than with hydrogen trucks.
The ICCT states that in a battery-only scenario (a scenario in which no hydrogen is deployed), 2.4 million battery electric trucks would require 3 million charging points. Out of these 3 million charging points, the ICCT predicts that 314,000 of these chargers are public 100 kW overnight chargers that charge electric trucks overnight, 51,000 are public 350kW fast chargers, 260,000 are public 1MW ultra fast chargers that will charge electric trucks in ~30 minutes. The ICCT estimates the remaining 2,375,000 private depot chargers are mostly 100 kW overnight chargers, so remaining calculations are done assuming that the private sector does not invest in fast or megawatt chargers. This is a flawed estimate, but due to the small number of fast and ultrafast chargers, and the possibility of private companies being able to use public fast and ultrafast chargers, this estimate may not be far off of the real value.
Deploying 2.4 million battery electric trucks only accounts for 78% of the national fleet of trucks. To estimate the number of charging stations to support an entire fleet of battery electric trucks, each value is scaled up by 1.28.
| Type of Charger | ICCT Estimate of # of chargers for 78% electric truck fleet | Our estimate of # of chargers for 100% electric truck fleet |
| Publicly-owned overnight chargers | 314,000 | 403,000 |
| Publicly-owned fast chargers | 51,000 | 65,000 |
| Publicly-owned ultra fast chargers | 260,000 | 333,000 |
| Privately-owned overnight chargers | 2,375,000 | 3,045,000 |
| Total | 3,000,000 | 3,846,000 |
It is recommend that states invest in installing publicly owned charging stations, consisting of overnight chargers, and fast and ultrafast chargers that will make long haul trucking possible. Table 5 in the ICCT reports shows that the predicted public investment in publicly owned charging stations to support 78% of the truck fleet being zero emission vehicles is $122 billion. The ICCT also estimates that in a scenario where no hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are deployed, public investment in publicly owned charging infrastructure amounts to $112 billion, an 8% reduction from the public investment in the scenario where hydrogen is included. This is still an estimate for if 78% of the fleet is converted. By dividing $112 billion by 0.78, a full estimate of $144 billion is found. This is likely an upper bound, because as shown in the figure below, the cost of charging stations will decrease over time.
Assuming that the amount of investment is equal each year, this indicates that the average cost of this policy will be $4.8 billion per year over a 30 year time period. An estimate on how much this will cost an individual state can be obtained by multiplying the proportion of trucks within a state by $4.8 billion.
An analysis by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research on the effectiveness of policies for electrifying the light duty fleet finds that fiscal spending on charging stations is an effective way to increase the proportion of light duty vehicle sales that are electric vehicles [3]Cassandra Cole and et. al, “Policies for Electrifying the Light-Duty Vehicle Fleet in the United States” (MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, September 8, 2021), … Continue reading. In the baseline scenario with no policies enacted, the model predicts the light duty electric vehicles occupy 20% of all light duty vehicles. However, a $7.5 billion cost-sharing program where the government subsidizes 67% of the cost of building of charging stations results in light duty electric vehicles occupying 30% of the market. The effectiveness of a rebate program may be slightly less, as those that want to build charging stations must have enough capital to cover the full upfront cost, while in a cost sharing program, one only needs a certain percentage of the full upfront cost to build the charging station. Due to the broad similarities between light duty and heavy duty electric vehicles, we assume this effectiveness can be extended to heavy duty electric vehicles as well.
Given the above analysis, it is recommend that states provide rebates to those that install charging stations. The cost of each charging station given in Figure 1 assisted in determining the cost of rebates for each type of charging station. It is proposed that states follow the rebate values in the Charge Up LA rebate program as initial rebate values [4]“Commercial EV Charging Station Rebate Program.” Accessed November 20, 2021. … Continue reading.
The rebate values for each charger are recommended to be almost the full value of a charger, in order to compensate consumers for inconsistency in supply and logistical challenges of obtaining electric chargers. Thus, the rebate of an overnight charger should be $100,000, the rebate of a fast charger to be $125,000, and the rebate of a megawatt charger to be around $250,000. It is anticipated that the rebate values can be lowered over time as electric trucking becomes more established and profitable.
The ICCT provides a graphic projecting the number of charging stations rolled out over time.
Since the ICCT did not publish its charging and hydrogen station projection data, a model for the number of charging stations over time was created. Visually, the ICCT appears to model the growth of chargers as growing quadratically up until 2040, and growing linearly after 2040 in Figure 2, and we use this assumption as well in our calculations. A graph depicting our model of the number of charging stations over time is shown below, and visually follows the same trend as the ICCT model.
We then assumed that the rebate program starts in 2025, then decreases linearly every 5 years. Under these assumptions, we found that the cumulative cost of implementing rebate policy across the U.S. over a 20-year period is $135 billion (click here for calculations). To find the cost that a specific state would have to spend, one can multiply the total amount spent in the U.S. by the proportion of trucks in that state.
We recognize this amount of money may be hard for a state to finance. We offer the following suggestions to help the state finance this policy:
- Change rebate values to 100% of full rebate value the first 5 years, 60% the second 5 years, 30% the third 5 years, and 20% the last 5 years
- Lower the initial rebate amount
- Pair this policy with our diesel taxation policy, or a separate taxation policy
We also want to emphasize the potential economic benefits of such a policy. States with many truck stops in them that push towards electrification of truck stops will attract private or for hire fleets that have begun truck fleet electrification such as FedEx, UPS, and Amazon[7]Ariana Fine, “FedEx Ground Operators Place Electric Vehicles Order,” NGT News (blog), August 9, 2021, https://ngtnews.com/fedex-ground-operators-place-electric-vehicles-order.[8]“Amazon and Rivian: Why Fleets Are Shifting to All-Electric,” accessed November 20, 2021, … Continue reading. Even without passing policy incentivizing the electrification of trucks, such states may find benefits in passing charging stations incentives due to the numerous private electrified trucks that may pass through these states.
Key Takeaways
- Through our calculations, we found that public investment in publicly owned chargers amounts to $144 billion over a 30 year time period, and the cumulative cost of implementing rebate policy for charging stations over a 20 year period is $135 billion over the entire U.S.
- We anticipate that rebate policy will be passed on a local level, thus a county or state can estimate the cumulative cost of this policy by multiplying these values by the proportion of trucks that are based within that area
- Though these are high costs to finance, we suggested several methods to lower the cost or raise government revenue. We also urge cities and states to conduct analyses on the economic benefits from increased electric vehicle flow in said cities and states, and weigh it against the costs of the policy.
References
