Waiting for electric truck parity could leave operators behind

Electric trucks are slowly getting cheaper, ranges are improving and the technology is ready to scale in many instances in Europe. DSV’s Anders Rousing explains why operators should start learning now – even before the business case is fully here.

For IRU member DSV, the transition to battery-electric trucks is increasingly about where they work, how they are operated and how quickly operators can build the experience needed to use them efficiently.

“We cannot have a market that is just waiting for magic to happen,” said Anders Rousing, Vice President, Group Operational Sustainability. “You need to step into it now to get the lessons.”

DSV’s road decarbonisation strategy is guided by its 2030 science-based targets, including a 50% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 30% reduction in Scope 3 emissions from a 2019 baseline. Its roadmap covers vehicles, charging infrastructure, customers and the commercial models needed for deployment to work.

Technology moving fast

Anders Rousing sees a clear progression in battery-electric trucks.

Early models offered ranges of around 200–250km. Current models are reaching 400–500km or more, while efficiency is improving and prices are slowly falling. DSV expects the next generation of trucks, around 2027–2028, to push this further as production scales and competition increases.

“The technology is there,” he said. “It is really about looking at how we start scaling it.”

Nevertheless, vehicle price remains a major obstacle, particularly for small and medium-sized operators.

That is where DSV believes its scale can help.

The company aggregates demand when negotiating with manufacturers, allowing subcontractors to benefit from conditions they would struggle to secure when buying only one or two trucks.

DSV is also investing in charging infrastructure at its own sites, reducing the need for operators to finance both a more expensive vehicle and the required charging infrastructure themselves.

Anders Rousing cautions against treating customer willingness as uniform. DSV sees some customers for whom decarbonisation is already a business requirement, others who are beginning to experiment, and still others who are not yet ready to pay more.

Finding the right use case

One of the biggest mistakes is to treat a battery-electric truck as a direct one-for-one replacement for diesel, Anders Rousing told us. “The right use case is key.”

Operators need to understand where the vehicle can achieve high utilisation, how charging fits into daily operations and where the technology reaches its “sweet spot”.

“If you wait until the TCO flips and then start learning how to operate this new technology, you are going to have a very steep learning curve,” said Anders Rousing.

DSV is applying the same logic across several technologies, including battery-electric, biogas, hydrogen and HVO, using operating data and business cases rather than relying on a single solution.

No universal tipping point

Anders Rousing does not expect electric trucks to reach TCO parity everywhere in Europe at once. Vehicle prices, charging costs, grid capacity, road taxes, energy prices and the impact of ETS2 will create different conditions from one market to another.

But once the economics turn in one market, he expects adoption to accelerate rapidly. “As soon as you start seeing the TCO flip in some markets, this is going to move very fast,” he said. DSV currently has more than 400 heavy-duty electric trucks operating in Europe. Those deployments are cutting emissions today while building the knowledge operators will need tomorrow.

“It shouldn’t be a waiting game,” he said. “You need the use cases and the data to understand how to operate this technology.”