How long until China can electrify its heavy trucks?

This year I visited my hometown, Shiyan in Hubei, for the first time in eight years.

The small city of three million or so people, deep in the Chinese interior, also happens to be a major manufacturing centre for heavy trucks. Ride a bus in Shiyan and you pass factories making axles, radiators, tyres – everything you need to build trucks.

Both the production and use of those trucks are polluting and carbon-emitting. By the end of 2025, China had 8.6 million heavy trucks on the road – 2.3% of all vehicles but causing 40-55% of carbon emissions from transportation. I certainly remember the air quality here being less than ideal, and the government has admitted the main culprits are coal-burning, vehicles, industry and dust. On this visit, the air did seem to be cleaner.

For EVs in China as a whole, market penetration is comfortably above 60%, meaning two of every three cars sold are EVs. But for heavy trucks, penetration at the end of 2025 was only around 28%. The electrification of heavy trucking is the next step in decarbonising transport.

In June, the Ministry of Transport and 10 other government bodies issued a plan on doing just that. They are targeting 40% penetration by 2030 and a fleet of 1.6 million electric trucks on the road.

Having grown up where they make trucks, I find these changes particularly fascinating. So what is actually happening? How achievable are those 2030 targets? And what do they mean for people who work in the industry?

From fossil fuels to electricity

The conventional fuel-burning trucks I grew up with form the largest part of China’s trucking fleet. By the end of 2025, only 4.5% of the national total were fuelled in alternative ways – 366,000 of them electric, the remaining 18,000 hydrogen-fuelled. As mentioned, alternative-fuel trucks accounted for 28% of sales in 2025, with the remainder powered by diesel or natural gas. 

That share of stock and sales may seem low, but alternative-fuel trucks, particularly electric ones, have only seen rapid development in the last six years. Penetration was down at 0.7% in 2021, rising to 5% in 2023.

In 2012, China identified all-electric vehicles as its strategic focus among the alternative-fuel options. Wang Zhitao, head of Hubei Qiancheng Vehicle Parts in Shiyan, told me that government direction sped up the move away from fuel-burning heavy trucks. He said his firm has also begun researching the other alternatives, including hydrogen and LNG.

The major challenge is that heavy trucks are often used to shift loads long distances, requiring bigger batteries or tanks.

In 2018, the State Council issued a document on continuing improvements in air quality, which called for tackling pollution from diesel goods vehicles; in 2021 its Action Plan for Carbon Dioxide Peaking Before 2030 called for more use of electric, hydrogen and LNG heavy trucks. Various subsidies and trade-in schemes were made available to companies buying those trucks and charging networks were expanded.

An achievable target

Yang Biqing, Asia energy analyst with think-tank Ember, says 2024’s trade-in policy has had a huge impact on market penetration over the last two years.

In 2024, the subsidies were worth as much as CNY 80,000 (USD 11,900). A year later, that rose to CNY 140,000. There are also some additional local subsidies: Hangzhou, for example, started offering up to CNY 190,000 in subsidies this June.

“There have been quite a few changes in policy this year,” Yang said. “Early this year, the subsidy policies weren’t fully released and it wasn’t clear how big the offering would be, so market penetration was lower then – 32% in January.

“Things started to heat up in March, and market penetration reached 45% in June.”

The recently issued alternative-fuel truck targets for 2030 – 40% market penetration and 20% stock (1.6 million vehicles) – do not seem so difficult to reach now.

“Deciding on a policy takes time for discussion, it could have been in the works for a year or two,” Yang said. “Given the current market, the target does look quite conservative, because of how fast things have developed over these two years.”

Charging, swapping and refuelling

Currently, electric trucks are the most mature of the alternative-fuel technologies and have the highest market share. Their batteries can either be recharged in place or swapped for fully charged ones at a swap station.

When trucks are used on fixed routes, such as between a mine and a steel plant, battery swaps can be more efficient. That’s according to the Smart Freight Centre, an international organisation working on transportation emissions. But recharging is expanding rapidly as charging networks improve in China. Currently, 70% of electric trucks being bought have batteries which are recharged on the vehicle, 30% have swappable ones.

Heavy trucks need more powerful chargers and an ordinary EV charging post won’t cut it. According to a state media report, only 17% of China’s 10 million charging points can provide the 120 kilowatts of power an electric heavy truck needs as a minimum.

Charging an electric truck at a charging station on the outskirts of Beijing (Image: Ng Han Guan / Associated Press / Alamy)

Wang Zhitao thinks that while rechargeable trucks have more flexibility in the routes they take, “there still needs to be some planning for provision of infrastructure within certain regions.” He says efficient use will only be realised when there are both enough charging points and enough vehicles.

Another alternative fuel type – hydrogen – is currently hampered by the cost of the gas and a lack of infrastructure. Making, storing and moving hydrogen currently costs over CNY 50 (USD 7.45) a kilogram, compared to half that for diesel.

“Hydrogen is currently very expensive and hydrogen fuel-cell technology isn’t yet mature. Also, there aren’t that many places you can refuel with hydrogen or gas, as would be necessary for long-distance journeys,” he added.

The Smart Freight Centre’s report also says hydrogen trucking needs more infrastructure in place before it can be used where appropriate.

Unexploited potential

There are obstacles to the wider rollout of electric heavy trucks, too. Take Shiyan, a city of 23,700 sq km: “There’s no need for heavy trucks here. Light or medium goods vehicles can do all that’s needed,” says Wang Zhitao. Heavy trucks are generally used in concentrations of heavy industry.

Qin Qi, a China researcher with the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, says many use cases for heavy trucks currently involve hauling coal in industrial parks. But China’s plans for zero-carbon industrial parks, and green transportation corridors between them, will bring more opportunities, she says.

The June policy sets a target of “over 80% electric heavy truck usage on short back-and-forth routes in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Fenwei Plain.” It also calls for the building of 3,000 battery swap stations, and for alternative-fuel trucks to be hauling 18% of all freight on expressways.

Thinking beyond trucks, Wang Zhitao says the building of 3,000 battery swap stations is a clear signal of policy focus shifting from passenger to commercial vehicles. He says service radius needs to be considered when siting charging stations for commercial vehicles. Generally, a station can cover 100 km, with the vehicles being able to travel 200 km. But the distribution and density of the vehicles within a region also needs to be considered.

But cost is crucial. A commercial vehicle battery costs CNY 60,000-100,000. So if a battery swap station has 50 batteries, they will cost almost CNY 4 million. Construction costs will push that up to at least CNY 5 million. That means, he says, it would cost around CNY 15 billion to build 3,000 battery swap stations on 600,000 km of expressway by industrial zones and on major transportation routes.

The ultimate aim of that investment is, he says, profitability. “Government support is just to get things started. Later on it will be largely privately owned and operated”. The commercial electric vehicles industry will be, like its passenger equivalents, run by private capital.

Currently though, the high cost of electric heavy trucks is a major barrier. According to one media report, such a truck can cost CNY 850,000, or CNY 450,000 more than a diesel equivalent. Even if you save one yuan on fuel every kilometre, or CNY 300 a day for 300 days a year, it would take five years to earn that extra cost back.”

Fresher air, more opportunities

It has been calculated by state media that if a third of China’s roughly three million heavy trucks were swapped for electric alternatives, it would save 345 million tonnes of crude oil a year. For context, China imported 500 million tonnes of oil in 2020.

Shiyan locals told me that many of the city’s factories have moved further away, as part of efforts to improve the environment. My husband and I, both sensitive to air quality, agreed that things had got better.

What else, besides the relocation of factories, will electrifying heavy trucks mean for the industrial city of Shiyan? Not much, says Wang Zhitao. Electric trucks still need to be built in much the same way as their diesel predecessors.

“The change also offers new opportunities,” he said. “China’s biggest deposit of niobium, which is used to make batteries, has been found here.”

On the way to the airport to return to the UK, I was thinking about that when I suddenly realised that all the filling stations were now offering a wider range of services: traditional fuels, battery recharging, gas and hydrogen. Last year, six new hydrogen-powered truck models were launched in the city. I hope that these changes will provide a green economic future for Shiyan and other Chinese cities like it.