Source: Radio New Zealand
Foodstuffs North Island has introduced the first battery electric truck and trailer unit to its long-haul fleet. Supplied / Foodstuffs North Island
A total lack of public charging infrastructure, high upfront costs and strict weight regulations are behind sluggish uptake of EVs in New Zealand’s heavy fleet, operators and advocates say.
Some trucking firms say their fuel bills have more than doubled as the cost of diesel skyrockets past $4 per litre.
But steep hurdles are preventing many of them electrifying their fleets, with full battery EVs making up less than three percent of new heavy vehicle registrations since 2021.
Drive Electric advocacy group chairperson Kirsten Corson said heavy vehicles only make up four percent of New Zealand’s total fleet, but account for 20 percent of transport emissions.
“It’s quite staggering, so it’s really one that we need to look at some mechanisms to increase the electrification, because right now we can see the vulnerability with fuel prices as they are.”
Rubbish collection company Waste Management was among early adopters, introducing the first electric truck to its fleet a decade ago.
Senior project engineer Ashley Davenport said the company’s heavy EV fleet had since grown to 60, most of them mid-sized bin collection trucks.
“We’ve just completed three million kilometres,” he said. “Two million litres of diesel was saved but that equates to 5000 tonnes of CO2 emissions, so that’s a big win, in our eyes.”
Hutt City Council staff with one of Waste Management’s 60 electric bin collection trucks. Elias Rodriguez / © Mark Tantrum
The drivers loved the trucks, too, he said.
“Once we get them in an electric truck we find it very hard to get them out of it. They enjoy [that] it’s smooth and quiet.”
The road to electrification had not been straightforward, though.
There were no off-the-shelf models available when Waste Management first introduced EVs to its fleet, and even today, most were conversions.
Funding available – but still low uptake
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) delivery and partnerships manager Richard Briggs said many more models, with updated technology and long-range batteries, were becoming available, but cost was among the hurdles for many operators.
“Many operators in this industry are in survival mode, and so it makes uptake of new technology like these trucks much harder, even if it makes sense.”
EECA’s low emissions heavy vehicle fund, announced in the 2024 Budget, had so far co-funded 120 full battery electric heavy vehicles and four hydrogen hybrid conversions.
“That’s probably less than we would have liked to have seen at this time,” Briggs said.
“It is growing rapidly – the last couple of months there’s been quite a spike in applications to the fund, which is quite interesting to see but not surprising given the rise in diesel price.”
About $3.5 million from the fund had been spent so far, with $24.2m remaining.
The availability and cost of charging infrastructure was the other side of the financial equation.
“One of the main barriers to the uptake of the low emissions heavy vehicle fund was the lack of charging, particularly journey charging,” Briggs said.
There were no dedicated public charging stations for heavy vehicles in the entire country, he said.
To help with that, EECA had just launched a $10m pilot fund to assist with setting up charging hubs, either at shared depots or at key points along highways.
Waste Management’s Ashley Davenport said charging was an important consideration as businesses scaled up their electric heavy fleets.
“Most sites would be able to support one or two trucks but, as you scale up from there, it would be really good to see the sector have a little more support.”
There were good examples from overseas of partnerships between companies that charged their vehicles at different times of day, Davenport said.
“They’ve actually made charging hubs where several companies will charge at the same site… and that really helps to spread the load of that initial upfront capital [cost].”
Call for updated weight regulations
Foodstuffs North Island sent its first long-haul battery-electric truck and trailer unit out on the road two weeks ago, just as diesel prices started to crunch.
Fleet safety compliance officer Chris King said the truck slotted into a run that a diesel vehicle used to do, starting with a morning trip from Palmerston North to Kāpiti before returning to charge up.
“Whilst that’s being charged up we’re able to load the trailer and we do a PM run which goes down to… our depot in Grenada in Wellington, and it’s a full load of milk that goes down there.”
In order to operate the truck though, Foodstuffs had to seek an exemption from Waka Kotahi, as the extra battery weight pushed it above normal axle weight limits.
The weight limits exist to limit the damage to roads from heavy freight, but were “a bit of a bone of contention” for operators wanting to go electric, King said.
“We’re relatively lucky [because] we don’t cart extremely heavy loads. Other operators that might cart a lot of heavy freight… that would be a real constraint for them.”
Heavy vehicles are subject to restrictions on the weight they can carry over axles. RNZ / Tracy Neal
Briggs said those restrictions – known as the vehicle dimensions and mass rule (VDAM) – were a problem many operators had encountered.
“They either have to have a smaller battery, which then reduces the range, or carry a smaller payload, which then obviously reduces the revenue for each trip.”
Kirsten Corson said the UK and Europe had increased their limits slightly to accommodate heavy EVs, and her organisation supported operators’ calls for New Zealand to do the same.
“The government could look at a business-as-usual exemption… and put that in place now until they get time to review that, because there’s trucks that could come into New Zealand if we could review those VDAM rules faster.”
She also wanted to see the road user charge exemption for heavy EVs, which is due to end on July the first next year, extended out to 2030.
“[Operators] are buying their trucks with a 10, 20-year total cost-of-ownership model. So having some certainty around RUCs is super-important because we aren’t seeing significant growth in our heavy transport sector.”
In a written response, Transport Minister Chris Bishop said Cabinet has already decided the RUC exemption would end because all road users should contribute to maintaining the network.
Axle weight limits were already on the work programme, and the government was considering whether aspects of that programme could go ahead more quickly, he said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
