Electric trucks step on war-powered accelerator

Volvo AB

29/04/2026 02:29

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist.  The opinions expressed are his own.

By Antony Currie

MELBOURNE, April 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Never let a good crisis go to waste. The boss of a Chinese electric-truck maker is applying that saying with gusto as the Iran war sends oil prices skyrocketing. Last week Windrose Technology founder and CEO Wen Han slashed the price of his road haulers in Europe more than 20% to match those of diesel guzzlers. That ought to turboboost battery-powered truck sales if charging infrastructure is rolled out quickly.

E-trucks made by Chinese upstarts like Sany Truck and $14 billion Sinotruk Hong Kong 3808.HK and Western manufacturers like $70 billion Volvo VOLVb.ST are cleaner, cheaper and faster to run than their fossil-fuel powered rivals. A Windrose 450-kilometre test delivery of Who Gives a Crap’s toilet paper from Sydney to Canberra in March cost 85% less than a diesel-powered trip and shaved 25 minutes off the trip because e-trucks can maintain speed going uphill, per New Energy Transport, the startup freight charging network that helped organise the trip.

Utilising these vehicles ought to increase energy security for fuel importers: road haulage has traditionally accounted for half of all diesel consumption in the People’s Republic, Sany Chair Liang Linhe said at a forum in Beijing this month, the South China Morning Post reported.

Sales of e-trucks in the Middle Kingdom doubled last year to around a quarter of new vehicles. Uptake is slower in the West: electric vehicles from Volvo cost more, and Tesla’s TSLA.O long-promised Semi will only hit the roads later this year. Windrose has already beaten Elon Musk to it in the United States, handing over its first truck this month.

Some roadblocks to faster adoption are bureaucratic, like Australian states’ differing axle-weight rules. But the top one, as with electric cars, is range anxiety. Truck battery chargers are more expensive than those for a sedan or SUV. That’s not a problem for larger mostly city-based businesses: EVs now make 82% of Ikea's deliveries Down Under.

It is, though, a restriction for long-distance work and for small haulage firms that dominate the industry and operate on razor-thin margins. Governments are helping: the UK this year unveiled a 1 billion pound ($1.35 billion) programme to encourage more e-truck sales and charging stations, California has committed $1.2 billion and Australia a modest A$100 million ($72 million) or so, including to New Energy Transport. The private sector is stumping up, too: KKR-backed KKR.N fleet electrification firm Zenobe intends to lend A$100 million to double e-trucks on Australian roads to 2,000 – along with chargers - by the end of the year.

The current crisis makes a short-term great sales pitch. Backing that up with a strategy to get all the infrastructure in place would make it more sustainable.

Follow Antony Currie on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

CONTEXT NEWS

      Electric-truck maker Windrose Technology on April 24 said it is reducing the price of its rigs to 195,000 euros from 250,000 euros "in response to the latest oil crisis". The cut means the Chinese manufacturer is now charging roughly the same as it costs to buy a diesel-powered truck.

On April 11 Liang Linhe, chair of Sany Truck, another of China's major e-truck manufacturers, said in a forum in Beijing that battery-powered lorries are on track to account for almost all road freight transport in the country. His words were first reported by the South China Morning Post on April 17. Liang did not give a timeframe for the shift.

Sinotruk shares powered up as China e-truck sales doubled https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/byvrnnrrjve/chart.png

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Aditya Srivastav)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on CURRIE/antony.currie@thomsonreuters.com))