The US has approximately 2.7 million semi trucks on the road today. These trucks, which mainly run on diesel today, provide a great opportunity for electrification. As battery costs come down and charging speeds get much faster, switching to electric will start to make more and more sense.
The biggest obstacle to adoption for electric trucks is the limited range that most of them offer today. This is changing slowly over time, with the Tesla Semi now having the ability to go a full 500 miles! What’s more, while some long haul diesel powered semi tractors do close to 1,000 miles a day, the average diesel semi truck on the road today completes just 300 miles every day. This is well within the reach of most electric trucks on the market today.
In this post, we break down four leading manufacturers in the electric freight truck market, Tesla, Freightliner, Volvo, and Peterbilt and examine how their Class 8 electric trucks stack up in terms of battery, performance, and real-world use.
Tesla
We have written about the Tesla Semi previously. It is clearly the the most hyped up electric truck on the market. In fact, it almost feels like the electric truck market in the US won’t take off unless and until Tesla starts churning out the Semi in large numbers!
Tesla claims an incredible range of 500 miles on a single charge with a full 82,000 lb load. This makes it the only long-haul electric truck on the market.
Tesla gets a 500 mile range because it uses a massive 900+ kWh battery using Tesla’s proprietary 4680 cell design. This is the largest battery on board any truck in the United States.
The 500 mile range on a 900+ kWh battery implies a 1.8 kWh / mile efficiency which is pretty good for any electric truck. To put it in context, the Peterbilt 579EV has a maximum battery capacity of 500 kWh which it claims allows for a total range of up to 250 miles. This implies a 2 kWh / mile efficiency which is more in line with what other OEMs can provide today with their electric trucks.
Tesla’s higher efficiency comes from its several years of experience manufacturing vertically integrated electric vehicles. Unlike legacy OEMs, Tesla controls the entire tech stack — powertrain, batteries, software, and charging infrastructure. Other OEMs, on the other hand, have to buy a battery from a third party and somehow try to fit it inside a truck without being able to manipulate it to fit its design. Tesla has the ability to fine tun the smallest details of battery cell manufacturing and packaging to ensure that its trucks are optimized for maximum aerodynamic efficiency.
The Tesla Semi is still in limited production though, for the time being. But all that is set to change in just a few months as Tesla’s new factory in Reno, Nevada starts to produce the Semis at scale.
Volvo
If you think that Tesla is going to be the inevitable leader in the freight truck space, it opens up the question of who can pick up most of the remaining market share. Volvo is a likely contender for that position with over 5,000 electric trucks sold in Europe and North America already.
Volvo has invested a lot into its electric trucks and its portfolio of trucks is rather expansive with almost 8 different chassis types. Volvo owns the Mack brand which has its own electric trucks including a refuse model which we have previously covered. Other than Tesla, Volvo is also the only electric truck manufacturer that makes its batteries in-house having acquired Proterra’s battery company assets out of bankruptcy.
Volvo does not have an offering that can compete with the Tesla Semi in terms of range, but it’s VNR electric model is a is more than sufficient for regional hauling where trucks don’t need to travel a 1,000 miles a day. Typical use cases would be drayage from a port, freight between warehouses etc.
The VNR comes with two batteries, the 377 kWh shorter range battery and the 565 kWh longer range battery. The charge rate on the VNR electric is 250 kW which implies that you can fully charge the shorter range battery in less than 2 hours, or get it from 10 – 80% in just an hour.
Volvo has had a lot of success in getting these trucks out on the road. It delivered about 70 of these trucks to several fleets last year as part of a $21.5 million funding initiative supported by the EPA and California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District. Most of these trucks were for regional freight distribution and drayage. According to Volvo, it had delivered more than 570 VNR electrics by September 2024, which is certainly more than the number of trucks delivered by Tesla!
Freightliner
If Volvo and Tesla are the most enthusiastic of the OEMs when it comes to electric trucks, Freightliner, is probably the least enthusiastic of the lot. Freightliner’s lack of enthusiasm for the US electric truck market might have a lot to do with it being a European company owned by Daimler Trucks. Daimler has every reason to invest its resources into Europe which has a regulatory environment that is a lot more suited to electric trucks.
Freightliner, for all its size, has just two electric truck models in its portfolio, the short haul suited eM2 truck and the eCascadia, which is suited for regional routes. The eCascadia comes with two battery sizes, a 291 kWh battery and a 438 kWh battery. Like the VNR electric, the eCascadia is designed specifically for short-haul and port operations.
Freightliner has deployed quite a few eCascadias across the US. It’s largest deployment is with Schnieder National which has more than a 100 eCascadias in its fleet. Sysco is another large buyer and has plans to buy up to 800 eCascadias by 2026. 800 electric trucks, that’s quite impressive!
Peterbilt
Peterbilt along with its sister company Kenworth (both PACCAR companies) has always been the gold standard for heavy duty trucks in the US. It’s roots go back more than a 100 years and it has only gone from strength to strength. If there is an All American trucking brand out there, it’s probably the Peterbilt! But sometimes, being a powerful incumbent in an industry facing disruption over the long term can make the transition to EVs a lot more difficult.
Does Peterbilt simply preserve its position in the diesel truck market or should it go all in to challenge a disruptor like Tesla?
Peterbilt’s response to the EV transition has been slow and steady. It hasn’t quite jumped all in like Volvo, but it’s slowly starting to churn out a lot more EV models across all its heavy duty segments.
Peterbilt’s 579EV is the company’s electric version of its diesel powered heavy hitting long haul truck – the 579.
While the 579 diesel can run in excess of a 1,000 miles on a single, the range on the 579EV is a lot more subdued and is more likely to not exceed 250 miles. The Peterbilt comes in 3 different battery sizes – a 250 kWh, a 375 kWh and a 500 kWh. If the Peterbilt achieves anything close to efficiency of the Tesla Semi (1.8 kWh/mile), the 500 kWh battery could last 275 miles but that’s highly unlikely.
The more likely scenario is a 200 – 250 mile range which makes it more suited to pickup and delivery, drayage, and intermodal operations, much like the Volvo VNR and eCascadia.
Comparison
| OEM | Model | Battery (kWh) | Range (mi) | Platform Focus | Battery Chemistry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tesla | Semi | ~900+ | 500 | Long-haul | NMC |
| Freightliner | eCascadia | 438 | 230 | Depot, regional | LFP |
| Volvo | VNR Electric | 375–565 | 150–275 | Short-haul, drayage | NMC |
| Peterbilt | 579EV | 400 | 150–200 | Regional/urban | LFP |
Conclusion
It should be clear from the above why the Tesla Semi is head and shoulders above the rest. Volvo, Freightliner and Peterbilt are going to be mostly confined to the short haul regional market, while the Tesla will in all likelihood be able to complete most long haul routes.
It is only a matter of time before Tesla’s competitors increase the range of their trucks, but it won’t be easy for them given that they just don’t have the vertical integration that Tesla has.
But the electric truck market is just getting started. If you are a legacy incumbent its probably better to start off with the smaller, easier routes, and get those “reps” in before you start doing the more difficult long haul routes, and that’s exactly what all the incumbents are doing.
The only risk is that by the time the incumbents improve their technology, the Tesla Semi would have already taken a sizeable chunk of the Semi market share!