7 ms·

China's BEV trucks and the end of diesel's dominance

130 points by xbmcuser 11mo ago

thenthenthen 11mo ago
It is absolutely magnificent to see a electric truck full of sand driving through the street, here is a (sorry, verry bad quality) video of a BYD one I caught: https://youtube.com/shorts/B0akomAQgkM?si=B1JEkKrTk6w7q5Bq https://youtube.com/shorts/B0akomAQgkM?si=B1JEkKrTk6w7q5Bq
- ehnto 11mo ago
  There are some electric trucks driving around Australian cities already as well. Though I love the sound of a straight cut gear, I suspect they'll want to work on quieting that drivetrain a bit. Thankfully there is a lot of prior art.
  - gorgoiler 11mo ago
    It sounds like a 2CV in reverse. The classic non-synchro-mesh sound used for cheapo reverse gears in the 1980s and 90s.
- ludamn 11mo ago
  Thanks for sharing, is that engine sound coming from the truck?
  - analog31 11mo ago
    Sounds like the person taking the video is on an electric bike.
    - pabs3 11mo ago
      I think its the truck, near the end the bike peels off to the left and you can hear the sound fading off to the right.
    - thenthenthen 11mo ago
      Op here, the sound is the truck, it sounds like a toy really haha.
  - ehnto 11mo ago
    It's from the truck, it's the transmission of the truck which is evident by changing pitch as the truck downshifts while slowing down. It likely uses a transmission as a tradeoff between torque and RPM of the electric motor or because it's a simpler task to retrofit an existing truck driveline with an electric motor bolted onto it. These are so noisy because of the use of straight cut gears, which you choose when preferring strength over noise and comfort. Most regular cars use helical gears which reduces the noise due to continuously meshing between gear teeth, whereas straight cut gears are like a paddle wheel, so the teeth are smacking into eachother head on each time they engage. That is also why they clunk when getting on and off throttle. We have some similar trucks running around Australia at the moment and the sound is the same, I'm also familiar with the sound from motorsport!
    - swiftcoder 11mo ago
      Are there weight/performance reasons why an electric truck would need a multi-speed transmission? Most electric cars only have a single-speed
      - lan321 11mo ago
        Some cars have 2 gears as well. One for the acceleration and one for cruising efficiency and top speed. So my guess is to get it going easier and then have 2nd as the eco gear for the speed they cruise at.
      - ehnto 11mo ago
        I am unsure sorry, electric motors do still have efficiency curves so that could be it. But I think a retrofit to an existing driveline makes more sense. Food for thought though, trucks are much much heavier loaded than cars. 100-150+ tonne vs like 1.5-4 tonnes for a car. Cars are trivial by comparison. Perhaps the motor they have available doesn't have enough torque for it without gearing down.
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        > Perhaps the motor they have available doesn't have enough torque for it without gearing down. This is true of cars too - the single-speed transmission in a Tesla is a 9:1 reduction gear, for example.
jmward01 11mo ago
[flagged]
- chneu 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - idiotsecant 11mo ago
    You're apparently the only one saying this. Maybe it's time to opt out of the outrage pornography cycle and contribute to the discussion in a more thoughtful way.
    - chneu 11mo ago
      I'm contributing with comedy by making fun of Americans for not realizing the rest of the world caught up and is passing them. A lot of Muricans are blinded by patriotism so it's helpful to make jokes.
      - CalRobert 11mo ago
        One thing I realised after emigrating from the US is that ignorance and the desire to view your own way of doing things as superior is universal.
        georgefrowny 11mo ago
        The Germans and British are certainly not immune to it!
      - kortilla 11mo ago
        A lot of pretty much any citizen population of a somewhat stable country is blinded by patriotism.
  - themafia 11mo ago
    This totally won't work. The infrastructure isn't built. Truck stops are built to store fuel. They're not built to deliver electricity. Cheap electric trucks solve the wrong problem currently.
SoftTalker 11mo ago
[flagged]
- blovescoffee 11mo ago
  What makes you think/say they’ve skipped safety standards?
- SapporoChris 11mo ago
  From the article, "China’s low price electric trucks do not arrive as finished products for Europe or North America. They need work." and the article goes on to describe what the author considered and an estimate of the cost.
- cwillu 11mo ago
  “The gap between a domestic Chinese tractor and a European or North American long haul tractor is roughly €80,000 to €120,000 once all mechanical, safety and comfort systems are brought to the required levels per my estimate.”
- robocat 11mo ago
  Some regulations are great, but far too many are just wasteful rubbish (perhaps captured). Safety standards are altogether too often designed for non-safety reasons. If we iterated through each and every safety regulation, I wonder how many of them are actually helping safety???
  - tpm 11mo ago
    In heavy trucks? Probably all of them, and I'd say all of them are worth it if we considered the damage each truck can do and the total number of trucks on the road.
    - andsoitis 11mo ago
      One point of view is that, at least in Europe, over regulation results in: compliance maze due to overlapping regulations, urban policies driven by cyclists and politics rather than logistics, fragmented harmonization across member states.
hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago
The text in teeny font under the headline picture is "ChatGPT generated. Chinese electric truck production lines expanding rapidly in 2024 and 2025." So, in other words, the leading image is a lie. When people say false things that purport to be true in text we call it lying or fraud. I don't understand why when they do it with an image it's not the same thing. Putting teeny, easily missed font that says "ChatGPT generated" doesn't make it OK. I might feel less strongly if the author put a disclaimer, in larger font, that said (more accurately IMO), "The above image is fake."
- ggm 11mo ago
  If your entire take away from this article is "the image is fake" when it declares it's GPT GENERATED then your on a low bar mission. Go hunt stories which don't declare it's a GPT masthead and excoriate them.
  - kortilla 11mo ago
    It wouldn’t be any different if it said “made from imagination with photoshop”. Using fake images is lame whether they are AI or not.
    - ggm 11mo ago
      How about drawing by hand with a bamboo tablet?
- PolygonSheep 11mo ago
  I personally stop reading and close the tab at the first sign of ChatGPT so I certainly dudn't get very far into this one!
Animats 11mo ago
The picture of two rows of electric trucks is marked "ChatGPT generated". Note that some of the trucks shown have three front grille slots, while some have two. Also, those trucks appear to have fuel tanks. The author is mostly talking about what someone else saw at the China Commercial Vehicles Show. Low-credibility source. There's plenty of info about that show, with real pictures.[1] BYD has a full range of electric trucks, but what they're pushing seems to be the T3 and T4 trucks. The new T4 is a straight truck, available as a box truck, flatbed, or open top truck. Or they'll sell the chassis for custom jobs. Claimed range is "up to 250km". It's intended for city use with once daily charging. The T3, which has been out for a few years, is an ordinary electric van, comparable to a Ford Transit or a Mercedes Sprinter. These are high-volume commercial products. Light and medium electric trucks are taking over fleet operations. BYD has a new line of heavy electric trucks, launched in April.[2] This isn't BYD's first try at heavy electric trucks. They delivered some (at least hundreds, but not tens of thousands) in 2022. The 2025 model is at least their third try. They don't claim to have cracked long-haul trucking. "BYD Tractor Q3: Focusing on Short – Haul Transportation and Breaking Through Medium – and Long – Haul Transportation" is their marketing pitch. There are multiple battery options, and for charging, the Q3 can be plugged into up to four chargers at once. Long-haul operation is possible, but it's not yet the target market. So the BYD heavy trucks aren't mainstream in China yet, but they're a lot closer than Tesla's Semi (yet another re-announcement: [3]) or the Nikola (only works going downhill and required a Trump pardon for the CEO). Volvo has a range of electric trucks, mostly sold in Europe. [1] https://www.chinatrucks.org/news/2025/1110/article_11304.html https://www.chinatrucks.org/news/2025/1110/article_11304.htm... [2] https://www.ctinsa.com/ccnes/5550 https://www.ctinsa.com/ccnes/5550 [3] https://elonbuzz.com/the-tesla-semi-2026-update-is-here/ https://elonbuzz.com/the-tesla-semi-2026-update-is-here/
- bgarbiak 11mo ago
  There is also Mercedes eActros line and MAN eTGX. There are already thousands of them in Europe. Funny how that just happened, without fanfares and trillion dollar evaluations. Speaking of which, I don’t know why would anyone still wait for Tesla Semi or any other up-and-comers. Promised better efficiency sounds good on paper, but means nothing if the product doesn’t exist or is an unreliable prototype with no service support. Now Chinese want to enter the market with cheaper trucks, but - as the article clearly mentions - these are not yet ready to be used in Europe or the States, and making them ready will increase the price.
yanhangyhy 11mo ago
Seeing this issue, I’m actually wondering what else might be replaced by batteries in the future… airplanes?
- chillax 11mo ago
  Some are testing viability https://www.luftfartstilsynet.no/en/about-us/news/news-2025/avinor-and-caa-norway-launch-new-rfp-for-zero--and-low-emission-aircraft-projects/ https://www.luftfartstilsynet.no/en/about-us/news/news-2025/...
  - yanhangyhy 11mo ago
    Considering the sheer number of commercial flight routes and travel demand worldwide, that actually sounds pretty promising.
- fsh 11mo ago
  Anything but airplanes. Current airliners have a fuel fraction between 24 and 47%, so any decrease in energy density massively compromises performance. The energy density of jet fuel is two orders of magnitude higher than modern batteries, and jet engines have efficiencies of a few ten percent.
  - swiftcoder 11mo ago
    Nonetheless, folks are working the problem. Albeit most of the current designs look more like short-haul passenger craft or automated cargo drones to connect remote communities.
    - abenga 11mo ago
      It feels like this would be a very tricky problem, seeing as it seems most large planes have "it's much lighter when landing than taking off" as part of the design constraints, seeing as maximum takeoff weight > maximum landing weight for most airliners (generally speaking, I think). It's probably not insurmountable, but it seems unclear how we fix this when takeoff weight == landing weight for electric planes.
contrarian1234 11mo ago
I think the article underplays the transition. They're not just-now being sold, it's already the norm. I was in Chengdu last summer and all the huge trucks hauling sand and rocks at construction sites where electric already (and not brand new.. they'd clearly been used quite a bit). The days of trucks making huge plums of smoke at intersections are gone. As I understood it ICE trucks are extremely limited in the hours they're allowed to operate in cities. So I'm actually a bit surprised by the BEV fraction in the plot. Maybe there are quite a few trucks between cities and in the countryside that I just wasn't seeing. I'm curious if the batteries can be swapped. Vehicles (trucks and taxis) are generally used in shifts, so you don't want to have the car just sitting around charging half the time
- seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
  My guess is that the long distance trucks (the old blue ones) are still mostly diesel and the trucks inside cities for local work are transitioning first? Every city could also be really different in terms of where they are in adoption, CD could be further along than lower tier cities. I didn’t notice any trucks at all when I was in Beijing last April, so I’m guessing that they still aren’t allowed inside the fifth ring in the day time electric or not.
  - cachius 11mo ago
    To electrify long distance trucks Bosch developed a fuel-cell power module (FCPM) it is already using for internal logistics. For long disctances f-cell and hydrogen tank are lighter than batteries would be. It supposedly can do 1000km without stops. https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/mobility-topics/fuel-cell-electric-drive/#benefits_2 https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/mobility-topics/fuel-cell-... See also my other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46076161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46076161
    - p_l 11mo ago
      Toyota has also been working on "hydrogen cartridges" that can be quick swapped including just delivering them like fuel cans
lars_francke 11mo ago
There's a fabulous YouTube channel on electric trucks in Germany if the topic interests you. German version: https://youtube.com/@elektrotrucker https://youtube.com/@elektrotrucker English: https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker this has fewer and shorter videos unfortunately.
- cachius 11mo ago
  There's a fabulous drive technology for electric trucks in Germany if powering it with hydrogen via fuel cell interests you. Got awarded the German Future Prize 2025 recently. https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-team-wins-innovation-and-advanced-technology-award-with-fuel-cell-power-module-280013.html https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-team-win... It's for long distance/quick refill operations. I wonder how the BEV trucks handle this. Can they swap batteries or are limited to shorter distances? Here's the award ceremony in German https://minily.org/gfp25-award-bosch-long-distance-truck-fcell https://minily.org/gfp25-award-bosch-long-distance-truck-fce...
  - trueismywork 11mo ago
    The real award ceremony is reduction of green houses gases. I think BEV do this better than hydrogen for a long time now. Hydrogen doesnt deem scalable.
    - cachius 11mo ago
      We use fewer critical raw materials for our fuel cell, unlike the lithium and cobalt typically used in batteries. Our use of these materials is considerably reduced. Sodium batteries won't help here as they are even more heavy. For the infrastructure, for long-distance transport, we need approximately 140 filling stations across all of Europe. That's a completely different scale than for battery-electric cars. In other words, there isn't that much to do. In Germany alone there are about 14000 gas stations, 350 at the Autobahn; housing some of the 160000 charging points.
      - 11mo ago
jillesvangurp 11mo ago
A couple of points in the article that are interesting: - EV trucks in China have less safety/comfort features and are therefore cheaper. The same would presumably true for diesel trucks. And that "extra" cost for that stuff would be the same elsewhere. It's not a reason EV trucks would be more expensive specifically anywhere. - China is starting to export these things around the world. I think this is very disruptive because it means the EU/US are increasingly isolated with higher cost of transport locally. - The ASP of EV trucks is dropping below those of diesel trucks. This is being driven by battery cost, which in China is of course closely following production cost of those and in any EV truck is (or was) the biggest cost component. Going from 150$/kwh to 50$ or lower is a big deal. Prices could be trending towards 10$/kwh mid term for some chemistries. At 150$ it's 90K, at 50$, 600kwh is 30K. at 10$ it's 6000$. It stops being the largest cost factor on the truck somewhere along that curve. That's going to happen everywhere. It's just economics and physics. There's no logical reason for an EV truck to be more expensive than a diesel truck long term. - Diesel usage is in decline in China. That's a real world effect that's hard to ignore. In China that means less imports are needed. It's a big economic shift in their favor to be needing less diesel/oil. Road miles tend to be dominated by newer vehicles: this effect might be faster than market shares suggest. The EU has very expensive diesel. Those effects would be exaggerated here. It also has very strictly enforced rest breaks every 4.5 hours. Ideally spaced to allow for a 45 minute charging break. 600kwh is all you need for long distance trucking in the EU. IMHO, the EU will catch up much quicker than the US: it has a bigger economical incentive. The US is producing its own fuel. China and the EU are not. Unless they switch to electric.
- 01100011 11mo ago
  I wonder how the economics are shifted in China which is dependent on foreign oil but has plenty of (some very dirty, some clean) electricity? I'm sure subsidies are playing a great role(as they do in all things in China) and national security concerns are making EV trucks more viable.
  - jillesvangurp 11mo ago
    At a macro level, more exports and less imports mean things should be good for their trade balance. Though you might rightfully worry about e.g. debt and other misaligned things in the Chinese economy. They have poor utilization of their production capacity for e.g. batteries. The Chinese think in terms of expensive and cheap electricity rather than dirty and clean. The reason they have so much clean energy growth is because it's saving them money. Subsidies are a very political/ideological talking point. But the traditional fossil fuel economy isn't exactly free from subsidies, incentives, tariffs, and other government instruments. The US having a dependence on oil and gas is hard to separate from its huge budgets for incentivizing and protecting that. The Chinese have been very strategic about their R&D in the last few decades. It's paying off though. Demand for their clean tech exports is increasing and just when oil/gas markets are becoming increasingly volatile they are managing to be less dependent on those.
dust42 11mo ago
Thus in China a 600KWh truck is 85.000€ while in Germany an eActros with 600KWh is 290.000€ (w/o VAT) [1]. Consumption is 100-120KW/h per 100km. The range is then up to 500km / 310 miles. Electricity price for industry is 0.112 USD in China, 0.455 USD in the UK, 0.29 USD in Germany, 0.149 USD in the US. [2] This definitely looks like starting to be competitive for various use cases and regions. Obviously it needs a charging infrastructure that can keep up with it. Charging speed is currently 350KW, 1MW chargers are in development. [1] https://www.auto-anders.de/eactros-600 https://www.auto-anders.de/eactros-600 [2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/map/electricity_industrial/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/map/electricity_industria...
deleted 11mo ago
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epistasis 11mo ago
The peak for combustion engines was nearly a decade ago now: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-sales-of-combustion-engine-cars-have-peaked https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-sales-of-com... The propaganda machine in the US has tricked a huge number of Americans into sabotaging their own industrial future, merely to give fossil fuel infrastructure stocks a few more years of slightly higher profits. When large corporations fail to adapt to changing technology, it gives smaller companies a chance to break in and take over markets. We are seeing exactly the same thing happening right now with China catching up to the US economy. And by refusing to adapt to better technology that saves us money, we are seriously handicapping our future.
- tcfhgj 11mo ago
  Welcome to Germany
- xbmcuser 11mo ago
  In my opinion, the dramatic change coming isn't just about combustion. The economics of electricity and energy are about to change profoundly over the next 20 years. We are simultaneously witnessing the potential demise of the Western economic empire and the rise of the Eastern economic bloc (specifically China, Southeast Asia, and India), alongside the global shift to a new electricity age. I frequently hear people argue that solar power isn't feasible for their specific location, but this perspective may soon render them economically uncompetitive. Trends clearly show that the production of almost everything is transitioning to electricity. Crucially, solar and battery storage are rapidly becoming the cheapest forms of electricity and continue to drop in price. We will soon reach a critical inflection point where we produce new solar panels and batteries using the very solar energy they generate. At this stage, subsequent generations of panels and batteries will become cheaper purely through the energy input cost reduction, even without new technological breakthroughs. Consequently, countries lacking significant investment in solar or wind resources are highly likely to become energy poor and economically uncompetitive.
  - chii 11mo ago
    > rise of the Eastern economic bloc the exact same thing was said for japan when their economy boomed. Whether china falls to the same fate, or actually sustain and overtake the west, is yet to be determined. However, trump's policies aren't really helping (but in fact, is actually enabling them). By removing the US as a large consumer, the CCP could be forced to switch to internal consumption model instead, which both increases the standard of living of the people there, as well as decrease the reliance on exporting (so lower economic leverage). Not to mention the west's economic policies are disparate between supposed allied countries - with friends like that, who needs enemies?
Gathering6678 11mo ago
I live in China, and even I am surprised to see completely electric heavy trucks that are eerily quiet compared to diesel ones and carrying building materials, just cruising by on public roads. No idea how well or expensive they run, though.
leobg 11mo ago
Let’s all remember Bill Gates’ prediction from 2020: > Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles. https://www.gatesnotes.com/moving-around-in-a-zero-carbon-world https://www.gatesnotes.com/moving-around-in-a-zero-carbon-wo...
- dontlaugh 11mo ago
  It wasn’t a prediction, but a defence of investment if fossil fuels.
- biehl 11mo ago
  That did not age well.
  - yoavm 11mo ago
    Why? Do we have many electric 18-wheelers, cargo ships, or passenger jets?
    - rsynnott 11mo ago
      As always, I realise that on this here orange website it is highly inappropriate to read the article, but the article is about mass adoption of BEV heavy trucks. Cargo ships and passenger jets are another matter, of course, and we won't be seeing battery ships (except for regional ferries) or battery planes of any sort anytime soon, but he was wrong about trucks.
      - yoavm 11mo ago
        Considering that the quote specifically talks about "long-haul vehicles", and that the article that no one read explicitly said "The long haul story is different. European and North American long haul operators require far more from a truck than a Chinese domestic short range tractor offers", I do not see why Gates' comment aged so badly.
cuandoentras 11mo ago
Looks like a ChatGPT generated article to me. All paragraphs and sentences are the same size and format.
steve_gh 11mo ago
Don't know about heavy trucks, but I can say this. I'm currently looking after a house being renovated in rural and hilly Northern England. There are a lots of trade folk coming by doing various things, all in the UK ubiquitous white vans. The decorator has an EV van. The sparky has an EV van. The groundworks folk have an EV van. When tradespeople are voting with their feet and buying EVs, then a shift is really happening.
- rsynnott 11mo ago
  > The sparky has an EV van. This one I'm always a bit dubious of, because, well, they're likely to have a lot of emergency callouts after a blackout. How are they charging their van? ESB Networks, the Irish state grid operator, increasingly uses electric vans. I suppose maybe they have a backup generator wherever they keep them? On the face of it, it seems like they'd be the _last_ thing you'd want to electrify.
  - Kirby64 11mo ago
    You’re optimizing for the 0.01% here. Also, cars don’t lose their charge completely just because a blackout happens. Unless you pull in to the depot/charging area low on charge and then immediately a blackout happens, and then you need to go out while it’s still happened… driving it around shouldn’t be an issue. Then, the other 99.9% of the time you get cheaper, quieter driving.
    - rsynnott 11mo ago
      Oh, yeah, definitely, but specifically for electricians it's a really _important_ 0.01%, I'd have thought.
      - Kirby64 11mo ago
        Most electricians don’t do this type of work, I’d say. For a grid operator, sure. For the standard guy coming to your house to do some wiring? No way.
caidehen 11mo ago
take both this article and my opinion with a large chunk of salt. Industries like car manufacturing, textile, farming and so on are just too old, everybody can join without much difficulty, not fancy ones, just usable. The competition is too intensive they just don't make much money and they are not the future. Investing too much in these industries are meaningless. Just use tariff walls to keep some local factories/farms open for strategic reasons(in case of war) and employment. --- Climate change and carbon emission is another story. For most people money for next bill is much more important.
rsynnott 11mo ago
Wow. So much for the 'electric road' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road); looks like batteries may have eaten its lunch by the time the bugs are worked out.
- namibj 11mo ago
  The Type C was tested in Germany; it's gone now that mercedes e-actros and similar ate it's lunch.

130 points by xbmcuser 11mo ago

It is absolutely magnificent to see a electric truck full of sand driving through the street, here is a (sorry, verry bad quality) video of a BYD one I caught: https://youtube.com/shorts/B0akomAQgkM?si=B1JEkKrTk6w7q5Bq https://youtube.com/shorts/B0akomAQgkM?si=B1JEkKrTk6w7q5Bq

ehnto 11mo ago
There are some electric trucks driving around Australian cities already as well. Though I love the sound of a straight cut gear, I suspect they'll want to work on quieting that drivetrain a bit. Thankfully there is a lot of prior art.
- gorgoiler 11mo ago
  It sounds like a 2CV in reverse. The classic non-synchro-mesh sound used for cheapo reverse gears in the 1980s and 90s.
ludamn 11mo ago
Thanks for sharing, is that engine sound coming from the truck?
- analog31 11mo ago
  Sounds like the person taking the video is on an electric bike.
  - pabs3 11mo ago
    I think its the truck, near the end the bike peels off to the left and you can hear the sound fading off to the right.
  - thenthenthen 11mo ago
    Op here, the sound is the truck, it sounds like a toy really haha.
- ehnto 11mo ago
  It's from the truck, it's the transmission of the truck which is evident by changing pitch as the truck downshifts while slowing down. It likely uses a transmission as a tradeoff between torque and RPM of the electric motor or because it's a simpler task to retrofit an existing truck driveline with an electric motor bolted onto it. These are so noisy because of the use of straight cut gears, which you choose when preferring strength over noise and comfort. Most regular cars use helical gears which reduces the noise due to continuously meshing between gear teeth, whereas straight cut gears are like a paddle wheel, so the teeth are smacking into eachother head on each time they engage. That is also why they clunk when getting on and off throttle. We have some similar trucks running around Australia at the moment and the sound is the same, I'm also familiar with the sound from motorsport!
  - swiftcoder 11mo ago
    Are there weight/performance reasons why an electric truck would need a multi-speed transmission? Most electric cars only have a single-speed
    - lan321 11mo ago
      Some cars have 2 gears as well. One for the acceleration and one for cruising efficiency and top speed. So my guess is to get it going easier and then have 2nd as the eco gear for the speed they cruise at.
    - ehnto 11mo ago
      I am unsure sorry, electric motors do still have efficiency curves so that could be it. But I think a retrofit to an existing driveline makes more sense. Food for thought though, trucks are much much heavier loaded than cars. 100-150+ tonne vs like 1.5-4 tonnes for a car. Cars are trivial by comparison. Perhaps the motor they have available doesn't have enough torque for it without gearing down.
      - swiftcoder 11mo ago
        > Perhaps the motor they have available doesn't have enough torque for it without gearing down. This is true of cars too - the single-speed transmission in a Tesla is a 9:1 reduction gear, for example.

jmward01 11mo ago

[flagged]

chneu 11mo ago
[flagged]
- idiotsecant 11mo ago
  You're apparently the only one saying this. Maybe it's time to opt out of the outrage pornography cycle and contribute to the discussion in a more thoughtful way.
  - chneu 11mo ago
    I'm contributing with comedy by making fun of Americans for not realizing the rest of the world caught up and is passing them. A lot of Muricans are blinded by patriotism so it's helpful to make jokes.
    - CalRobert 11mo ago
      One thing I realised after emigrating from the US is that ignorance and the desire to view your own way of doing things as superior is universal.
      - georgefrowny 11mo ago
        The Germans and British are certainly not immune to it!
    - kortilla 11mo ago
      A lot of pretty much any citizen population of a somewhat stable country is blinded by patriotism.
- themafia 11mo ago
  This totally won't work. The infrastructure isn't built. Truck stops are built to store fuel. They're not built to deliver electricity. Cheap electric trucks solve the wrong problem currently.

SoftTalker 11mo ago

[flagged]

blovescoffee 11mo ago
What makes you think/say they’ve skipped safety standards?
SapporoChris 11mo ago
From the article, "China’s low price electric trucks do not arrive as finished products for Europe or North America. They need work." and the article goes on to describe what the author considered and an estimate of the cost.
cwillu 11mo ago
“The gap between a domestic Chinese tractor and a European or North American long haul tractor is roughly €80,000 to €120,000 once all mechanical, safety and comfort systems are brought to the required levels per my estimate.”
robocat 11mo ago
Some regulations are great, but far too many are just wasteful rubbish (perhaps captured). Safety standards are altogether too often designed for non-safety reasons. If we iterated through each and every safety regulation, I wonder how many of them are actually helping safety???
- tpm 11mo ago
  In heavy trucks? Probably all of them, and I'd say all of them are worth it if we considered the damage each truck can do and the total number of trucks on the road.
  - andsoitis 11mo ago
    One point of view is that, at least in Europe, over regulation results in: compliance maze due to overlapping regulations, urban policies driven by cyclists and politics rather than logistics, fragmented harmonization across member states.

hn_throwaway_99 11mo ago

The text in teeny font under the headline picture is "ChatGPT generated. Chinese electric truck production lines expanding rapidly in 2024 and 2025." So, in other words, the leading image is a lie. When people say false things that purport to be true in text we call it lying or fraud. I don't understand why when they do it with an image it's not the same thing. Putting teeny, easily missed font that says "ChatGPT generated" doesn't make it OK. I might feel less strongly if the author put a disclaimer, in larger font, that said (more accurately IMO), "The above image is fake."

ggm 11mo ago
If your entire take away from this article is "the image is fake" when it declares it's GPT GENERATED then your on a low bar mission. Go hunt stories which don't declare it's a GPT masthead and excoriate them.
- kortilla 11mo ago
  It wouldn’t be any different if it said “made from imagination with photoshop”. Using fake images is lame whether they are AI or not.
  - ggm 11mo ago
    How about drawing by hand with a bamboo tablet?
PolygonSheep 11mo ago
I personally stop reading and close the tab at the first sign of ChatGPT so I certainly dudn't get very far into this one!

Animats 11mo ago

The picture of two rows of electric trucks is marked "ChatGPT generated". Note that some of the trucks shown have three front grille slots, while some have two. Also, those trucks appear to have fuel tanks. The author is mostly talking about what someone else saw at the China Commercial Vehicles Show. Low-credibility source. There's plenty of info about that show, with real pictures.[1] BYD has a full range of electric trucks, but what they're pushing seems to be the T3 and T4 trucks. The new T4 is a straight truck, available as a box truck, flatbed, or open top truck. Or they'll sell the chassis for custom jobs. Claimed range is "up to 250km". It's intended for city use with once daily charging. The T3, which has been out for a few years, is an ordinary electric van, comparable to a Ford Transit or a Mercedes Sprinter. These are high-volume commercial products. Light and medium electric trucks are taking over fleet operations. BYD has a new line of heavy electric trucks, launched in April.[2] This isn't BYD's first try at heavy electric trucks. They delivered some (at least hundreds, but not tens of thousands) in 2022. The 2025 model is at least their third try. They don't claim to have cracked long-haul trucking. "BYD Tractor Q3: Focusing on Short – Haul Transportation and Breaking Through Medium – and Long – Haul Transportation" is their marketing pitch. There are multiple battery options, and for charging, the Q3 can be plugged into up to four chargers at once. Long-haul operation is possible, but it's not yet the target market. So the BYD heavy trucks aren't mainstream in China yet, but they're a lot closer than Tesla's Semi (yet another re-announcement: [3]) or the Nikola (only works going downhill and required a Trump pardon for the CEO). Volvo has a range of electric trucks, mostly sold in Europe. [1] https://www.chinatrucks.org/news/2025/1110/article_11304.html https://www.chinatrucks.org/news/2025/1110/article_11304.htm... [2] https://www.ctinsa.com/ccnes/5550 https://www.ctinsa.com/ccnes/5550 [3] https://elonbuzz.com/the-tesla-semi-2026-update-is-here/ https://elonbuzz.com/the-tesla-semi-2026-update-is-here/

bgarbiak 11mo ago
There is also Mercedes eActros line and MAN eTGX. There are already thousands of them in Europe. Funny how that just happened, without fanfares and trillion dollar evaluations. Speaking of which, I don’t know why would anyone still wait for Tesla Semi or any other up-and-comers. Promised better efficiency sounds good on paper, but means nothing if the product doesn’t exist or is an unreliable prototype with no service support. Now Chinese want to enter the market with cheaper trucks, but - as the article clearly mentions - these are not yet ready to be used in Europe or the States, and making them ready will increase the price.

yanhangyhy 11mo ago

Seeing this issue, I’m actually wondering what else might be replaced by batteries in the future… airplanes?

chillax 11mo ago
Some are testing viability https://www.luftfartstilsynet.no/en/about-us/news/news-2025/avinor-and-caa-norway-launch-new-rfp-for-zero--and-low-emission-aircraft-projects/ https://www.luftfartstilsynet.no/en/about-us/news/news-2025/...
- yanhangyhy 11mo ago
  Considering the sheer number of commercial flight routes and travel demand worldwide, that actually sounds pretty promising.
fsh 11mo ago
Anything but airplanes. Current airliners have a fuel fraction between 24 and 47%, so any decrease in energy density massively compromises performance. The energy density of jet fuel is two orders of magnitude higher than modern batteries, and jet engines have efficiencies of a few ten percent.
- swiftcoder 11mo ago
  Nonetheless, folks are working the problem. Albeit most of the current designs look more like short-haul passenger craft or automated cargo drones to connect remote communities.
  - abenga 11mo ago
    It feels like this would be a very tricky problem, seeing as it seems most large planes have "it's much lighter when landing than taking off" as part of the design constraints, seeing as maximum takeoff weight > maximum landing weight for most airliners (generally speaking, I think). It's probably not insurmountable, but it seems unclear how we fix this when takeoff weight == landing weight for electric planes.

contrarian1234 11mo ago

I think the article underplays the transition. They're not just-now being sold, it's already the norm. I was in Chengdu last summer and all the huge trucks hauling sand and rocks at construction sites where electric already (and not brand new.. they'd clearly been used quite a bit). The days of trucks making huge plums of smoke at intersections are gone. As I understood it ICE trucks are extremely limited in the hours they're allowed to operate in cities. So I'm actually a bit surprised by the BEV fraction in the plot. Maybe there are quite a few trucks between cities and in the countryside that I just wasn't seeing. I'm curious if the batteries can be swapped. Vehicles (trucks and taxis) are generally used in shifts, so you don't want to have the car just sitting around charging half the time

seanmcdirmid 11mo ago
My guess is that the long distance trucks (the old blue ones) are still mostly diesel and the trucks inside cities for local work are transitioning first? Every city could also be really different in terms of where they are in adoption, CD could be further along than lower tier cities. I didn’t notice any trucks at all when I was in Beijing last April, so I’m guessing that they still aren’t allowed inside the fifth ring in the day time electric or not.
- cachius 11mo ago
  To electrify long distance trucks Bosch developed a fuel-cell power module (FCPM) it is already using for internal logistics. For long disctances f-cell and hydrogen tank are lighter than batteries would be. It supposedly can do 1000km without stops. https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/mobility-topics/fuel-cell-electric-drive/#benefits_2 https://www.bosch-mobility.com/en/mobility-topics/fuel-cell-... See also my other comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46076161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075305#46076161
  - p_l 11mo ago
    Toyota has also been working on "hydrogen cartridges" that can be quick swapped including just delivering them like fuel cans

lars_francke 11mo ago

There's a fabulous YouTube channel on electric trucks in Germany if the topic interests you. German version: https://youtube.com/@elektrotrucker https://youtube.com/@elektrotrucker English: https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker https://youtube.com/@electrictrucker this has fewer and shorter videos unfortunately.

cachius 11mo ago
There's a fabulous drive technology for electric trucks in Germany if powering it with hydrogen via fuel cell interests you. Got awarded the German Future Prize 2025 recently. https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-team-wins-innovation-and-advanced-technology-award-with-fuel-cell-power-module-280013.html https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-team-win... It's for long distance/quick refill operations. I wonder how the BEV trucks handle this. Can they swap batteries or are limited to shorter distances? Here's the award ceremony in German https://minily.org/gfp25-award-bosch-long-distance-truck-fcell https://minily.org/gfp25-award-bosch-long-distance-truck-fce...
- trueismywork 11mo ago
  The real award ceremony is reduction of green houses gases. I think BEV do this better than hydrogen for a long time now. Hydrogen doesnt deem scalable.
  - cachius 11mo ago
    We use fewer critical raw materials for our fuel cell, unlike the lithium and cobalt typically used in batteries. Our use of these materials is considerably reduced. Sodium batteries won't help here as they are even more heavy. For the infrastructure, for long-distance transport, we need approximately 140 filling stations across all of Europe. That's a completely different scale than for battery-electric cars. In other words, there isn't that much to do. In Germany alone there are about 14000 gas stations, 350 at the Autobahn; housing some of the 160000 charging points.
    - 11mo ago

jillesvangurp 11mo ago

A couple of points in the article that are interesting: - EV trucks in China have less safety/comfort features and are therefore cheaper. The same would presumably true for diesel trucks. And that "extra" cost for that stuff would be the same elsewhere. It's not a reason EV trucks would be more expensive specifically anywhere. - China is starting to export these things around the world. I think this is very disruptive because it means the EU/US are increasingly isolated with higher cost of transport locally. - The ASP of EV trucks is dropping below those of diesel trucks. This is being driven by battery cost, which in China is of course closely following production cost of those and in any EV truck is (or was) the biggest cost component. Going from 150$/kwh to 50$ or lower is a big deal. Prices could be trending towards 10$/kwh mid term for some chemistries. At 150$ it's 90K, at 50$, 600kwh is 30K. at 10$ it's 6000$. It stops being the largest cost factor on the truck somewhere along that curve. That's going to happen everywhere. It's just economics and physics. There's no logical reason for an EV truck to be more expensive than a diesel truck long term. - Diesel usage is in decline in China. That's a real world effect that's hard to ignore. In China that means less imports are needed. It's a big economic shift in their favor to be needing less diesel/oil. Road miles tend to be dominated by newer vehicles: this effect might be faster than market shares suggest. The EU has very expensive diesel. Those effects would be exaggerated here. It also has very strictly enforced rest breaks every 4.5 hours. Ideally spaced to allow for a 45 minute charging break. 600kwh is all you need for long distance trucking in the EU. IMHO, the EU will catch up much quicker than the US: it has a bigger economical incentive. The US is producing its own fuel. China and the EU are not. Unless they switch to electric.

01100011 11mo ago
I wonder how the economics are shifted in China which is dependent on foreign oil but has plenty of (some very dirty, some clean) electricity? I'm sure subsidies are playing a great role(as they do in all things in China) and national security concerns are making EV trucks more viable.
- jillesvangurp 11mo ago
  At a macro level, more exports and less imports mean things should be good for their trade balance. Though you might rightfully worry about e.g. debt and other misaligned things in the Chinese economy. They have poor utilization of their production capacity for e.g. batteries. The Chinese think in terms of expensive and cheap electricity rather than dirty and clean. The reason they have so much clean energy growth is because it's saving them money. Subsidies are a very political/ideological talking point. But the traditional fossil fuel economy isn't exactly free from subsidies, incentives, tariffs, and other government instruments. The US having a dependence on oil and gas is hard to separate from its huge budgets for incentivizing and protecting that. The Chinese have been very strategic about their R&D in the last few decades. It's paying off though. Demand for their clean tech exports is increasing and just when oil/gas markets are becoming increasingly volatile they are managing to be less dependent on those.

dust42 11mo ago

Thus in China a 600KWh truck is 85.000€ while in Germany an eActros with 600KWh is 290.000€ (w/o VAT) [1]. Consumption is 100-120KW/h per 100km. The range is then up to 500km / 310 miles. Electricity price for industry is 0.112 USD in China, 0.455 USD in the UK, 0.29 USD in Germany, 0.149 USD in the US. [2] This definitely looks like starting to be competitive for various use cases and regions. Obviously it needs a charging infrastructure that can keep up with it. Charging speed is currently 350KW, 1MW chargers are in development. [1] https://www.auto-anders.de/eactros-600 https://www.auto-anders.de/eactros-600 [2] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/map/electricity_industrial/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/map/electricity_industria...

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epistasis 11mo ago

The peak for combustion engines was nearly a decade ago now: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-sales-of-combustion-engine-cars-have-peaked https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-sales-of-com... The propaganda machine in the US has tricked a huge number of Americans into sabotaging their own industrial future, merely to give fossil fuel infrastructure stocks a few more years of slightly higher profits. When large corporations fail to adapt to changing technology, it gives smaller companies a chance to break in and take over markets. We are seeing exactly the same thing happening right now with China catching up to the US economy. And by refusing to adapt to better technology that saves us money, we are seriously handicapping our future.

tcfhgj 11mo ago
Welcome to Germany
xbmcuser 11mo ago
In my opinion, the dramatic change coming isn't just about combustion. The economics of electricity and energy are about to change profoundly over the next 20 years. We are simultaneously witnessing the potential demise of the Western economic empire and the rise of the Eastern economic bloc (specifically China, Southeast Asia, and India), alongside the global shift to a new electricity age. I frequently hear people argue that solar power isn't feasible for their specific location, but this perspective may soon render them economically uncompetitive. Trends clearly show that the production of almost everything is transitioning to electricity. Crucially, solar and battery storage are rapidly becoming the cheapest forms of electricity and continue to drop in price. We will soon reach a critical inflection point where we produce new solar panels and batteries using the very solar energy they generate. At this stage, subsequent generations of panels and batteries will become cheaper purely through the energy input cost reduction, even without new technological breakthroughs. Consequently, countries lacking significant investment in solar or wind resources are highly likely to become energy poor and economically uncompetitive.
- chii 11mo ago
  > rise of the Eastern economic bloc the exact same thing was said for japan when their economy boomed. Whether china falls to the same fate, or actually sustain and overtake the west, is yet to be determined. However, trump's policies aren't really helping (but in fact, is actually enabling them). By removing the US as a large consumer, the CCP could be forced to switch to internal consumption model instead, which both increases the standard of living of the people there, as well as decrease the reliance on exporting (so lower economic leverage). Not to mention the west's economic policies are disparate between supposed allied countries - with friends like that, who needs enemies?

Gathering6678 11mo ago

I live in China, and even I am surprised to see completely electric heavy trucks that are eerily quiet compared to diesel ones and carrying building materials, just cruising by on public roads. No idea how well or expensive they run, though.

leobg 11mo ago

Let’s all remember Bill Gates’ prediction from 2020: > Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles. https://www.gatesnotes.com/moving-around-in-a-zero-carbon-world https://www.gatesnotes.com/moving-around-in-a-zero-carbon-wo...

dontlaugh 11mo ago
It wasn’t a prediction, but a defence of investment if fossil fuels.
biehl 11mo ago
That did not age well.
- yoavm 11mo ago
  Why? Do we have many electric 18-wheelers, cargo ships, or passenger jets?
  - rsynnott 11mo ago
    As always, I realise that on this here orange website it is highly inappropriate to read the article, but the article is about mass adoption of BEV heavy trucks. Cargo ships and passenger jets are another matter, of course, and we won't be seeing battery ships (except for regional ferries) or battery planes of any sort anytime soon, but he was wrong about trucks.
    - yoavm 11mo ago
      Considering that the quote specifically talks about "long-haul vehicles", and that the article that no one read explicitly said "The long haul story is different. European and North American long haul operators require far more from a truck than a Chinese domestic short range tractor offers", I do not see why Gates' comment aged so badly.

cuandoentras 11mo ago

Looks like a ChatGPT generated article to me. All paragraphs and sentences are the same size and format.

steve_gh 11mo ago

Don't know about heavy trucks, but I can say this. I'm currently looking after a house being renovated in rural and hilly Northern England. There are a lots of trade folk coming by doing various things, all in the UK ubiquitous white vans. The decorator has an EV van. The sparky has an EV van. The groundworks folk have an EV van. When tradespeople are voting with their feet and buying EVs, then a shift is really happening.

rsynnott 11mo ago
> The sparky has an EV van. This one I'm always a bit dubious of, because, well, they're likely to have a lot of emergency callouts after a blackout. How are they charging their van? ESB Networks, the Irish state grid operator, increasingly uses electric vans. I suppose maybe they have a backup generator wherever they keep them? On the face of it, it seems like they'd be the _last_ thing you'd want to electrify.
- Kirby64 11mo ago
  You’re optimizing for the 0.01% here. Also, cars don’t lose their charge completely just because a blackout happens. Unless you pull in to the depot/charging area low on charge and then immediately a blackout happens, and then you need to go out while it’s still happened… driving it around shouldn’t be an issue. Then, the other 99.9% of the time you get cheaper, quieter driving.
  - rsynnott 11mo ago
    Oh, yeah, definitely, but specifically for electricians it's a really _important_ 0.01%, I'd have thought.
    - Kirby64 11mo ago
      Most electricians don’t do this type of work, I’d say. For a grid operator, sure. For the standard guy coming to your house to do some wiring? No way.

caidehen 11mo ago

take both this article and my opinion with a large chunk of salt. Industries like car manufacturing, textile, farming and so on are just too old, everybody can join without much difficulty, not fancy ones, just usable. The competition is too intensive they just don't make much money and they are not the future. Investing too much in these industries are meaningless. Just use tariff walls to keep some local factories/farms open for strategic reasons(in case of war) and employment. --- Climate change and carbon emission is another story. For most people money for next bill is much more important.

rsynnott 11mo ago

Wow. So much for the 'electric road' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road); looks like batteries may have eaten its lunch by the time the bugs are worked out.

namibj 11mo ago
The Type C was tested in Germany; it's gone now that mercedes e-actros and similar ate it's lunch.