According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, electric truck prices in Europe declined by 27 percent in recent years, while US prices increased by 32 percent. US truck manufacturers and the trucking industry have used every weapon they have available to slow the sale of electric trucks so they can crank out more high profit Class 8 diesel powered trucks. To offset some of that industry pressure, the Zero-Emission Truck Shipper-Carrier Alliance Leading Electrification, otherwise known as ZET SCALE, is seeking to accelerating the deployment of heavy duty electric trucks all across North America, with a goal of adding 10,000 of them to the nation’s highways as soon as possible. The effort brings together shippers, carriers, truck manufacturers, charging, and finance providers into one joint purchase, which can turn a daunting, expensive transition into a clear, affordable, and lower risk experience. Interested parties no longer need to navigate the ins and outs of purchasing heavy duty electric trucks alone. ZET SCALE aligns the entire value chain, which unlocks better vehicle pricing, innovative financing, coordinated charging infrastructure, and freight demand — all of which helps make zero-emission trucking commercially viable. Commitment For 2500 Electric Trucks ZET SCALE is an offshoot of Catalyst Mobility, which used to be known as CALSTART. The Smart Freight Center is a partner in the new organization, as are Microsoft and PepsiCo. Its purpose is to obtain lower prices from manufacturers by offering to make bulk purchases. This week, it announced it had secured commitments from its members to purchase 2500 battery electric Class 8 trucks — equal to the total number of them in the US today. Of those 2500 trucks, the majority will come from Tesla, with the rest supplied by Kenworth, Volvo, and RIDE. “After evaluating price, range, charging capability, and production capacity, the Alliance selected Tesla as its primary OEM for the initial 2,500 trucks,” ZET SCALE said. Every Class 8 truck manufacturer in North America was invited to participate in the tender. The 2,500 Class 8 electric trucks will be distributed across ten freight hubs in the coming years — Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle/Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark/New York area. The timeline for deliveries is not yet known. The ZET SCALE initiative is supported by a financing company called ZET Financial, which places the orders and operates the ZET Lease program that is designed to remove residual value risk from fleet balance sheets. According to Michael Berube, CEO of Catalyst Mobility, that risk has been a major market barrier. “You can have good technology and still not have a market,” Berube explains. “What is different about ZET SCALE is that the demand was organized so manufacturers could price at scale. That is how costs move, and that is how clean trucks leave the pilot phase.” Christoph Wolff, CEO of the Smart Freight Center, agrees. “Every part of the freight industry wants cleaner trucks, but until now each company faced that transition — and its risks — alone. ZET SCALE aligns shippers, carriers, manufacturers, and financiers around a single, real demand signal. When the risk is shared across the whole chain instead of resting on any one player, the industry can finally move at scale,” he says. California SB 1213 Enacted The ZET SCALE announcement came the same week as the state of California approved new legislation designed to bring greater price transparency and accountability to California’s zero-emission medium and heavy duty truck market. According to state senator Eloise Gómez Reyes, a sponsor of the new legislation, SB 1213 will provide the state with better information about vehicle pricing to help ensure those public investments are effectively reducing costs and supporting the deployment of zero-emission trucks. “California is making significant investments in our clean transportation future, and taxpayers and fleet operators deserve to know those investments are delivering real value,” Reyes said. “SB 1213 brings greater transparency and accountability to the clean truck market so we can better understand what these vehicles actually cost and help drive those costs down over time. For communities like the Inland Empire, where families have carried the health impacts of goods movement for generations, making cleaner trucks more affordable means cleaner air and healthier neighborhoods.” To ensure long term market stability, SB 1213 directs the state to explore alternative financing models, including low cost loans and residual value guarantees. Those tools are specifically designed to scale the market more quickly, encourage new manufacturing entrants, and provide the financial confidence to fleets to invest in a zero-emission future. This bill also provides a template for other states to ensure their truck incentive programs are actually making affordable trucks available to fleet operators. Seven states, including California, have released guidelines for electric truck price data reporting in order to improve the effectiveness of state incentive programs. Dan Priestley, who heads the Tesla Semi program, said in a statement, “ZET SCALE’s goals are exciting because they take the operational cost advantage and predictability that electricity provides and amplifies it at scale. We are proud to have been the primary selection in this RFP and look forward to giving shippers and carriers a new competitive edge.” There is no information available about whether ZET SCALE was able to lower the purchase price of the Tesla Semjs it will buy. Recently, Tesla received an order for 500 Semis from Einride and an additional order for 50 trucks from IMC Logisitics. The Einride order includes Standard Range Semi trucks for transportation from ports as well as Long Range Semi trucks for routes between Southern California and inland warehouses. It also had a significant presence at this year’s IAA Transportation show in Hannover, Germany, where electric trucks or every size and description were on display. Fear Of Competition If prices are declining somewhat in Europe, it may be due in part to the presence of electric models from Chinese manufacturers like Sany, which are typically less costly than trucks manufactured domestically. BYD had a large presence in Hannover last week and already manufacturers electric buses in California. It would be interesting to compare its prices for Class 8 electric trucks to those from Tesla. Of course, there are no Chinese electric trucks in the US, because the country is terrified of competition. Imagine that! A nation that for the past 70 years has prided itself on making the best products the world has ever known and exporting them to every corner of the world is trembling at the thought of having to compete with other countries. Policy initiatives are welcome, but a healthy dollop of competition would do wonders for the transition to electric trucks in the US. The total cost of ownership equation favors electric trucks today because of the high cost of diesel fuel, but fleet operators think in terms of years, not weeks. If they believe the diesel crisis will sort itself out fairly quickly, they have less incentive to move away from diesel trucks, which cost less than half as much as new electric trucks to buy — $180,000 versus $400,000, according to Google. A bright spot on the horizon is that electric truck sales in China have soared in the past year to the point they dominate new truck sales. That’s what ZET SCALE would like to see happen in the US.