Are electric trucks sustainable?
Electric vehicle production and adoption is increasing at an exponential rate which is a necessary step in the fight against climate change.
However, not all electric vehicles are created equally. Especially when we get into electric trucks.
Below I’ll be breaking down why electric trucks are probably not the best option…especially since most of us don’t need them anyway.
Let’s highlight some things that will help us with our final calculations.
1. America loves large vehicles
Over 2.7 million pickup trucks were sold in the United States in 2022. This is a slight decline from 2021, but they still represent 16.7% of all vehicles on the road.
The top 3 most popular used cars in 2022 are all pickup trucks (Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado 1500, and Ram 1500). iSeeCars Executive Analyst, Karl Brauer, puts it nicely as:
If we look at both pickups and SUVs we can see that even with electric vehicles, the US still likes to go big with 82% of electric vehicle sales being SUVs or large cars.
Compare that to Europe which is 65%.
One reason this may be happening is purely because you are seeing more of the large EVs…you can see below the extremely lopsided advertising dollars between small and large EVs. I’ll let you guess which one is which.
2. Not everyone needs a large vehicle
Let’s look at a study from Strategic Vision and associated article to see what the behaviors of pickup truck drivers are:
- The biggest use of pickups by drivers is pleasure driving
- 75% of truck owners tow once a year or less
- 35% of truck owners put something in the bed of their truck (hint: we’ll be using this number in our calculations below)
- 70% of truck drivers off-road once a year or less
From these stats you can see that not everyone who owns a truck needs one and is more doing so for pleasure or status.
3. Electric trucks are less efficient
Trucks weigh more…and it takes more energy to move more weight…so we see from a study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) that there is a positive correlation between weight of the vehicle and EV efficiency (kWh/100 miles).
We should note efficiency isn’t entirely due to weight and takes into account things like the engine, aerodynamics, and other considerations. That’s why you don’t see a perfect correlation.
The work by ACEEE also looked at non-battery weight and the positive correlation still exists.
4. GHG emission comparison for vehicle types
We should start out by saying:
Electric vehicles in almost all cases have reduced lifetime GHG emissions when compared to ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles.
You can see that directly below from work from the International Energy Agency (IEA)…
The above is a look at the lifetime of the vehicles, but let’s put that aside and look at carbon emissions of driving per mile.
Let’s start with “miles per gallon equivalent” (MPGe) which is the efficiency rating given to EV’s to compare them to internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. We use this because EV’s obviously don’t have “gallons” of fuel.
The GHG emissions associated with ICE vehicles is straightforward since there are 8,887 grams of CO2/gallon of gas.
It gets more complicated for EV’s because the emissions will differ by country and by grid when charging your car. Thankfully, Quartz did some great work on looking at emissions by geography for various EV models.
Through this work my 2016 Ford Fusion Hybrid with ~42 MPGs will generate 212 grams of CO2/mile…
…while the Hummer EV generates 276–341 grams of CO2/mile if you look at the US and globe. Only if you charge your Hummer EV in Europe will you get down to 166 grams of CO2/mile and surpass my hybrid.
My car even beats the Ford F-150 Lightning, Rivian R1T, and Tesla Cybertruck when looking at the global grid emissions / mile.
I should note that this is compared to my hybrid and that electric trucks will still fare better against most non-hybrid ICE vehicles for mileage emissions.
But the Tesla Model 3 destroys the competition with only 58–119 grams of CO2/mile which is 44–73% more efficient than my hybrid.
Note: I plan on trading in my hybrid for an EV sedan or motorcycle in the next year.
5. Projected emissions avoidance
So now we know electric trucks are less efficient than EV cars and can potentially produce more emissions per mile than non-EV cars.
What do these numbers look like when scaling out to all vehicle sales?
Let’s look at annual sales numbers and look at lifetime gasoline and electricity emissions for various scenarios.
We are assuming 150,000 miles over the vehicle’s lifespan and 2,746,561 vehicles which are the # of trucks sold in 2022 in the US. Emissions are in million metric tons of CO2.
- Gasoline emissions if all trucks sold were ICE = 183
- Electricity emissions if all trucks sold were electric trucks = 86.5
- Electricity emissions if trucks were only sold for function (35%) and the rest were Tesla Model 3s = 56
- Electricity emissions if only Tesla Model 3s were sold= 40
- Emissions truck owners only used rail = 10.5
Note: This is for cars sold annually and is only emissions/mile…this does not consider embodied emissions from production and material usage which are slightly higher for EVs than ICE vehicles (look at IEA chart above).
So…are electric trucks sustainable?
“Sustainable products” is a very hard term to define and most of the time can be greenwashing.
Considering the above graph we can see that electric trucks are going to greatly reduce (>50%) mileage-associated emissions when compared to ICE trucks.
However, we can continue to reduce emissions by over 50% if we don’t purchase electric trucks at all. And you can reduce emissions by another 73% if we only use rail.
Considering the amount of people in the US and the world, it’s hard to believe that the continued use of trucks and electric trucks can be considered sustainable…especially when you consider the use of minerals to create the batteries and parts, the child labor that is occurring right now to mine for those minerals, production-associated GHG emissions, and how heavier vehicles are more dangerous in accidents.
It’s a complex topic, but for now I will point you to the graphic below to help you with your transportation decision-making.
Also, it should go without saying….please walk and bike more. The rest of it should only be on an as-needed basis. Enter our city-planners :)
Detailed Calculations
Gasoline emissions for ICE trucks =
(Annual pickup sales) * (grams CO2/mile for Ford F-150) * (expected lifetime miles) / (grams to tonnes of CO2)
Gasoline emissions for ICE trucks =
(2,746,561) * (444) * (150,000) / (1,000,000) =
183,000,000 metric tons CO2
Electricity emissions for electric trucks =
(Annual pickup sales) * (average grams CO2/mile for top 4 electric trucks in US) * (average expected lifetime miles) / (grams to tonnes of CO2)
Electricity emissions for electric trucks =
(2,746,561) * (210) * (150,000) / (1,000,000) =
86.5 million metric tons CO2
Electricity emission for Tesla Model 3 replacement =
[(Annual pickup sales) * (% of truck owners who don’t use their trucks for function)] * (Tesla Model 3 grams CO2/mile) * (average expected lifetime miles)] / (grams to tonnes of CO2)
Electricity emissions for Tesla Model 3 replacement =
[(2,746,561) * (0.65)] * (97) * (150,000) / (1,000,000) =
26 million metric tons CO2
Emissions Savings =
(Electric truck electricity-related emissions) — [[(electric truck electricity-related emissions) * (% of truck owners who use their trucks)] + (Tesla Model 3 replacement emissions)]
Emissions Savings =
(86.5m) — [(86.5m * 0.35) + (26m)] =
30.5 million metric tons CO2
Emissions for national rail =
(Truck owners) * (national rail grams CO2 emissions per mile) * (miles) / (grams to tonnes CO2)
Emissions for national rail =
(2,746,561) * (25.5) * (150,000) / (1,000,000) =
10.5 million metric tons CO2
