Discussion keeps the world turning.
China already proved it could reshape the auto industry with electric cars.
Now it's setting its sights on the big rigs that move the world's goods.
But truckers aren't swayed by hype, only by hard numbers at the pump.
But if the math works, the price of everything from groceries to gadgets could drop.
So will China pull off the same magic twice, or is this one road too far?
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thanks for joining us today.
And for the show, I'm with Fei-Fei and Yushan.
First up.
China's electric car story has gone from an ambitious government plan to a global success that reshaped the auto industry.
Now the country is trying something even bigger, bringing that same momentum to heavy duty trucks.
It's a move that could change not just transportation, but the cost of delivering almost everything we buy.
But, unlike passenger cars, trucking is all about business, economics and drivers.
Well, they will only switch if the numbers truly add up.
So is China about to repeat its EV success story?
And if electric trucks take off, what could that mean for consumers around the world?
We're going to talk about big trucks today.
Yushan and Feifei, good afternoon.
But China's EV ambition.
It started with electric cars, of course, and that's where I'd like to start today.
Because maybe a lot of people don't know that it goes back a lot further than many might realize.
Yeah, as early as early 2000s, I think.
Even earlier than that, China started to push the RD, the research and development into electric vehicles and other new energy vehicles, and very fast.
But I think the theories, the research has always been there.
But what really has been there to make a difference really happened in 2009.
That's when China really decided to launch a pilot program to promote this kind of new energy vehicles or electric vehicles on the market.
It first started in public transport, like your buses and taxis, And also in big cities like Beijing Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen and others.
And I remembered seeing that happening.
The whole fleet of taxis in the city of Beijing switched to electric vehicles.
And then, after that, they start to see how to get ordinary consumers to buy EVs, since we have proven that these kind of vehicles can be used in public transportations.
Can be used in buses and taxis.
And then so in 2010, from onward from there, they start to introduce subsidies and financial incentives for individual drivers to buy electric vehicles.
And I also remembered back then my friends talking to me about should I buy an electric vehicle like around 2010?
And we were like, but isn't that is that can you drive, you know, long distance So many questions.
Yes, but it's very cheap, she said.
So that is the primary reason that she decided to purchase an electric vehicle.
And fast forward now, we're not really concerned about distance, at least in China at the moment.
And that comes with not only with the vehicles, but also with the whole transportation system.
You know the transformation of that as well.
Yeah.
And back then I remember just how big of a debate it used to be among the gas car drivers and EV believers.
Let's call them.
There are not yet many EV drivers back then because people were...
Tempted to try, but not enough feedback is giving them confidence to see like just how good this is gonna work.
And, of course, there were supporters, there were people who doubt Evie.
But things really started to pick up, like you said Feifei, back in 2010, and That's when four government departments wrote out just a series of subsidy programs to encourage people to buy EV.
And two years later, in 2012, the State Council also unveiled the Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan 2012 to 2020.
So it's the long-term plan that served as a roadmap for that industry.
It's meant to set out where China wanted to go and which technologies to focus on in terms of EV manufacturing, and also how the government would support the sector.
It was a very long, detailed strategy that paid off.
By 2024, more than half of all new cars sold in the country were electric or hybrid, and that's a share that has since climbed over 60.
That's from CNBC.
Really impressive.
And now we see globally how China's electric passenger vehicles have become a number one option for people to buy all around the world.
Now we get over into the big trucks.
And this is something that is relatively new in terms of a plan.
But that's what China is doing.
It's trying to do for heavy trucks what it successfully did for electric passenger cars.
So let's start with the targets and the goals here.
Yeah, the government released its actually first nationwide plan to speed up this switch to new energy heavy trucks.
And the goal was by the year 2030.
It wants 16 million new energy heavy trucks on the road and also hopes that four out of every 10 new heavy trucks sold will be powered by new energy.
And if those goals were met, about one in every five heavy trucks in China will be a new energy vehicle by the end of the decade.
And they're also forecasting is not every trucks that we're talking about in this plan will be all electric.
They'll also experiment with different sources of power.
I think hydrogen. like hydrogen, and there are also talks about methanol.
So they are trying out which one can work for the best.
But it's very similar to the new energy passenger vehicles back then, I think.
20 30 years ago, people were also talking about the possibility of mass scale production of hydrogen passenger vehicles.
But that one didn't really prove to be successful on the market.
But now they're talking about maybe hydrogen can be the solution for heavy traffic.
Yeah, it's an interesting comparison because it's not exactly apples to apples, with electric passenger vehicles and electric heavy trucks.
The heavy truck industry is almost far more complicated in a way.
We'll talk about all of the things that came to mind for us in terms of how complicated it is.
But first of all You need a lot of roads with a lot of charging stations, because those trucks travel extremely long distances.
That's true.
And on top of just studying and researching on what kind of material can boost the truck better, China is also planning to build 30000 kilometers of zero-carbon freight corridors along the major highways, together with around 3000 charging and battery swapping stations designed to specifically charge those heavy trucks along the road.
And that's something that's really important as well, apart from the RD for the trucks themselves, because we need to have these infrastructure in the first place, in my personal opinion, in order for the e-trucks if I may call them that way to thrive.
Yeah.
I mean, you can have all the e-trucks you want, but if you don't... anywhere to charge them.
If you don't have the infrastructure in place, then it's kind of pointless.
And that's why the infrastructure is essential to a program like this.
Yeah.
And also when it comes to trucks.
I think it's also very similar here that we can compare with passenger vehicles is that In this early stage of rolling out passenger vehicles on the market, we also see problems like we don't have enough charging stations for all the electric vehicles on the roads.
And then people are talking.
Experts and policymakers and so forth start to talk about we need to build The power system needs to be ready.
And then we need to build enough charging stations.
We also need to consider the price.
And the same thing is also happening with the trucks as well.
For a long time.
Even though we have seen electric trucks and new energy trucks on the road, they're mostly limited to the last mile route, like connecting ports.
You know destination from port or maybe to the company or to the delivery for local deliveries.
Local deliveries, yeah.
Yeah.
And if we're talking but these are only a small share when we're talking about the use of heavy duty trucks.
And if we're talking about traveling, for instance, long distance, thousands of kilometers of traveling, deliveries and electric vehicles, heavy trucks currently cannot power that successfully, so for truck drivers, they're still battling this distance anxiety if they they're driving electric vehicles, and so that's why we're seeing infrastructures to have charging stations, to have battery swapping stations are very, very important to solve this distance or duration anxiety for drivers.
Yeah, and that's one of the main differences, isn't it, between the electric passenger vehicles and the heavy trucks.
Is that when people were considering buying a passenger vehicle, an electric one, They didn't think oh well, you know, I have to drive from Beijing to Shanghai every day.
So I think I'll get myself a car with a battery that might not get me halfway there.
No, that wasn't part of the conversation.
Right.
It was.
I'm going to buy an EV because I commute to work back and forth 15 minutes, 20 minutes to an hour every day.
It's a different thing.
Now you've got to go from the southern part of the country to the eastern, to the western, to the northern part of the country.
And you need a lot more range on those batteries.
Yeah, so this is where the planned 30000 kilometers of zero carbon freight corridor comes in, because the focus of that is on the major expressways where long distance trucking actually happens.
For example, it plans to cover the expressways in China, including the G15, the G25.
Let's take the G15, for example.
It's known as the Shenhai Expressway.
So this one.
It runs from Shenyang in northeast China's Liaoning province to Haikou in Hainan province in the other south of this country.
Oh, the same highway all the way from the north to the south.
Yeah.
If you're familiar with the map of China, it looks like a rooster, right?
So that means to connect the rooster's throat with his foot.
Okay.
Right.
That's like 3,600 kilometers.
Wow.
We're talking about one of China's longest north to south expressways.
So imagine that equipped with stations of charging poles for those trucks, and how big of a deal that can make just by adding charging and battery swapping facilities along routes like this.
So this is the point of this plan that could turn electric trucks from a niche solution for just short trips into a potential, realistic option for long-haul transportation.
Yeah, and the dedicated heavy truck charging stations fix the problem of how do we get our truck from point A in the north to point B in the south.
3,000 dedicated heavy truck stations would fix that.
The plan would require, of course, new or upgraded service areas to build those stations or maybe even reserve space to set aside for them specifically.
But anyway, that does solve that particular problem.
Also I mentioned in the opening that maybe for car purchasers you might be thinking I want to do something nice for the environment.
But for truckers who deliver our goods...
Yes, of course.
They don't want to hurt the environment, but it's all about the math.
It's all about whether it makes financial sense for them to make a change from a diesel truck to an electric vehicle.
Yeah.
I mean, when it comes to trucking, economics is very, very important.
We're talking about these contractor trackers who depend.
This is their livelihood.
So every penny matters for them.
And when it comes to diesel yes, diesel costs more, currently at 32 yuan per kilometer, and electric is much, much more cheaper about 1 yuan.
That can be a massive saving, but the math is not as simple as that.
And if, for example, those savings were evaporated when the drivers need to waste hours waiting in line to recharge their trucks or can't find a station nearby when they need it?
And that can be a very simple math for them to do.
So this corridor network that ensure this reliable, fast charging.
Some stations can do a full charge in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, Or some other companies are rolling out battery swapping stations that can swap a depleted battery in under two minutes.
And then you can, you know, bring the trucks back onto the road, and which paves the bills for a lot of truck drivers across the country.
And that, I mean, matters even more.
I think it's their primary concern for truck drivers, choosing between a diesel-powered truck and an electric truck.
That is as simple as that.
I mentioned the environment a moment ago.
Let's talk about that.
Heavy trucks here in the country represent a very small percentage of the entire population of vehicles on the roads right.
But they do produce...
A large percentage of all road transport carbon emissions.
And that's why speaking from an environmental point of view, this is also a priority.
Yeah, because when it comes to passenger vehicles, for instance, we're talking about, they contribute about 30 of emissions within the transportation sector.
The transportation sector is responsible for about 90 of total emissions.
No sorry, road transportation makes about 90 of total emission in transport system.
But we can see that a lot is happening when it comes to passenger vehicles.
A lot of them are getting electrification.
And they contribute to about 12% that they reduce the amount of carbon emissions.
But when it comes to heavy duty trucks, they account for 50 of emissions in the road in the transportation sector.
And they are very, very critical because they consume roughly 50 of fuel used in road transportation.
So with this plan for instance, building 30000 kilometer corridor that directly supports this broader target of getting 16 million electric heavy trucks on the road by the year 2030, that carry about 20 of all highway freight in the country.
I think, and I want to talk about how our lives will be impacted in a moment, but I think...
Another difference is that if you go back to the early 2000s and China had its EV ambitions then, and maybe even earlier, is when you know the real plan started.
You were starting from scratch at that time.
The thing with the EV big trucks is that they are not starting from scratch.
You have battery technology that's been researched and developed over the decades that can be transferred.
It's the same batteries, right, from electric cars.
They're the same batteries that will power electric trucks and buses and construction equipment and things like that.
So that's a bit of spillover that would benefit this new ambition.
Also, the supply chains would be shared, right?
So the networks that are already in place that would mine lithium and refine materials and manufacture cells and all of that stuff –
Those same supply chains can serve heavy trucks, too.
So the scale would lower the cost for actually it would lower the cost for everyone.
It would lower the cost for cars and trucks and boats and forklifts and whatever else you're powering.
So there's a lot of I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a lot of spillover here.
A lot of the research and development that was done before for the electronic passenger vehicles will spill over into the big truck industry.
Yeah, when it comes, for instance, battery swapping.
I think battery swapping doesn't really exist 10 years ago, but it is a product.
I won't say it's a product, but more of a system, a solution that manufacturers came up with as they start to mass produce passenger electric vehicles on the market.
And it proved it can work commercially and it can generate revenues and can save costs for the drivers.
And so, of course, when it comes to heavy trucks, it's something they can continue to expand on this.
But I think heavy trucks is the reason that we're calling them the last mile problem when we're talking about decarbonization in the transportation system.
Something is still very different.
For instance, when it comes to the long haul issue, that you need to travel 3000 kilometers across the country
And you need, of course, the battery technology.
Currently are not able to power in one charge.
To finish that
And also, of course, when it comes to build more charging stations physically for heavy trucks is another story.
When it comes to building charging stations for passenger vehicles we're talking about.
And also when it comes to trucks used or equipment used in mines in steel manufacturing sectors, is a lot more heavier and bigger in size than the trucks we see on the road.
And that's another story.
That's another technological breakthrough that a lot of the companies that need to go.
But I think they're getting there, especially when it comes to, for instance, different technologies, strat experiments, when it comes to different technologies, for instance, when it comes to hydrogen fill cell heavy trucks that rely on hydrogen.
I think when we, when you visit the port of tianjin, very close to beijing, you can see a lot of these trucks traveling on the road And you can see that they have this cell sort of in between the driver's seat with the trucks where they carry all the freight.
And you can see that cell that carry the hydrogens that need to be powered the trucks.
And a lot of manufacturers are also testing, for instance methanol, which is basically alcohol that can also be used to power a lot of these heavy duty trucks.
And so you can see that different solutions are coming out so that they can be used to I don't know cleaner the air, lower the logistic costs that we are seeing and also maybe making the cities a lot quieter.
Right.
Well, lowered logistics costs.
Yushan, as we talk about maybe the potential benefits for us customers, that could be one on the list.
Yeah, because most of us don't really drive a truck on a daily basis, but we do receive groceries and products and items that's delivered by a truck.
And that's where we kind of need to go back to the costs, because e-trucks are much cheaper to operate than diesel trucks.
So some Chinese logistics companies already say they've cut operating costs by more than 20 just by switching to e-trucks.
So if those savings are sustained at scale, they could help actually help reduce shipping costs so that we're paying less for the items delivered by those e-trucks.
That's one thing, and yeah, you mentioned it already, feifei that clear, cleaner air also matters, because nowadays it's particularly on highway, expressways service centers if you just pull over for for a rest, for or for a meal, It's quite apparent that you're sniffing into a lot of the emission from diesel trucks.
You can smell it.
Yeah, you can smell it.
Some people say they love it.
Me as one of those people.
I grow up smelling it.
I kind of just get used to it.
But in the future.
Perhaps future generations do not need to grow up smelling those emissions anymore anymore.
Because nowadays these e-trucks, they're replacing diesel trucks with electronic ones.
That could help improve air quality and reduce the emissions, especially in areas with heavy freight activities, such as ports, industrial parks, highways and major logistics hubs.
And also...
I'm living in an area currently that's very close to a construction site, kind of like door-to-door next to the community I'm staying in right now.
So e-truck, in that sense, can help replace a lot of the noise that heavy trucks are making.
Oh, they're not as noisy.
Nowadays.
That's just one big thing that I can't think of right now as a huge change of my life, because usually those heavy trucks they operate quite frequently in night times.
That's kind of like the only time they're allowed to move into central cities.
So yeah, that's a big difference.
That's a practical benefit for people living in the cities as well.
Yeah.
The goal too, is the number 80, I believe, for the freight corridors within districts, or sorry districts might not be the right word.
I'm thinking like Tianjin, Beijing, Hubei would be part of one cluster, right?
Maybe they call them clusters.
The goal there is to have, I think it's 80%, right?
Where they want to have electric vehicles for those deliveries within those regions.
So you've got the long haul trucks.
I notice, whenever I order something, that it always gets delivered from the southern part of the country up to the northern part of the country.
And one of my fun little hobbies is I like to follow the delivery truck on the application.
Do you do that too?
I just want to know where it is.
And I noticed, once it gets close to Beijing it stops and drops off the package and it's picked up by another truck and brought the rest of the way.
And I guess that's what we're talking about when we're talking about these local clusters where they want to have a high percentage of the vehicles within those clusters be electric.
Yeah, because when it comes to these short haul freight routes, I think it's more matured when it comes to long hauls.
They are facing a lot of challenges.
But when it comes to this short haul, that means transportation within a range of about 150 kilometers.
That can be completed in a single day or with multiple rounds of trips per day.
And when they are seeing that fixed route.
That means you know what station, what route this trust will go through.
That mostly happens not only in cities, but also, for instance, within a port, within industrial areas, area within the mindset or within cities as well, as can be used.
I think for Beijing Tianjin Hobi cluster they are targeting at more than 80 of this fixed route short haul freight routes to become electric by the end of 2030.
I mean, that's a lot, a lot of trucks.
Pretty high percentage, too, 80%.
Yeah, thinking about how many people at least how many people are ordering online in Beijing and Tianjin.
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.
I mean, this is a very exciting project.
It's a huge project, but it's...
It's inspiring a lot of questions within me and it's inspiring a lot of companies to already get involved, because certain industry giants they've already turned to this
So let's talk about that.
Maybe an example of what's going on within the industry already.
Traditional truck manufacturers are already in this transformation of getting more of their diesel truck replaced by e-trucks.
For example, the FAW Zifeng.
They reported a year-on-year increase of over 200 in NEV sales in early 2025.
They're just doing just that.
And that transformation also involves companies that weren't traditionally known for heavy trucks, for example BYD, which has already become a global giant in terms of EV.
Passenger vehicles.
Passenger vehicles, for now.
They have also introduced a full lineup of electric heavy trucks.
Have they?
Including tractors, dump trucks, and concrete mixers even.
So other industrial giants like Yutong Bus, the new energy bus maker, and also XCMG, which is also a Chinese construction machinery manufacturer, and also another one called Zoom Lion, that's in equipment sector, they're all expanding their new energy truck business as well.
And one leader brand called Sani, I think we have to mention this one as well.
They have spent decades building excavators and construction machines, And also they are moving into electric vehicles.
Only five years ago and has since stopped selling diesel trucks at home.
Interesting.
And now they claim the largest single export shipment of electric trucks in China that has sent abroad.
We'll touch on that in a moment.
It was very, I was on the company, I was on the Saini company website this morning.
Yeah, they made a big order recently, right?
They made a huge order.
Yeah, 800, more than 800.
Well, it was bigger than the total number of electric trucks combined shipped out of the country in 2025.
This company, Sani, did it in one order.
And I was on their website.
I mean, they had pictures posted.
It looked like somebody's wedding anniversary.
Of course.
Of course we will be proud.
Oh, they were very excited about it, as they should be.
I'll come back to that in a moment.
But before I forget, I want to talk about the battery companies, too, because this is a challenge.
You're not making these batteries for small passenger vehicles, right?
Yeah, but for battery companies they're also seeing the heavy truck sector as a new opportunity that they can expand their share on the market.
For example, CATL. which is the world's largest EV battery maker, is betting on battery swapping.
So, instead of waiting to recharge, they are providing truck drivers with a simple swap of this battery for fully charged ones in just a few minutes.
So they developed a standardized battery pack that works within more than 95 of mainstream heavy truck models and built battery swap station system enabling rapid replacement across different brands and models.
And its first 17, I think.
Swap stations deployed by the end of 2025 could serve coal transport vehicles in northern China, and more than 1400 battery swapping trucks had also been delivered on the route as of May 2025, with thousands more undersigned order intentions.
Thousands more already ordered last year.
You can see that not only manufacturers are interested, But also these battery companies.
They are also betting on heavy trucks to be the future of technology.
And that brings to another battery suppliers called EVE Energy.
They believe in ultra-fast charging is a better solution.
So you can see they're doing their own experiments on the market.
And especially for medium and long distance transportation.
That company said, while battery swapping suits short distance logistics, it is limited by cost and lack of unified standards.
So they are thinking ultra fast charging can solve that solution.
In their solution, heavy truck batteries can charge from 10 to 8 in just 18 minutes, with peak charging power of up to 1500 kilowatts.
You see, we were just talking about how e-truck may follow the, the growth of EV in policies and how the incentives are given and also the challenges are given to companies in order for them to compete a little bit to come up with new ideas and innovations as a matter of time passes.
But now we see different solutions out already and the outcome is very handsome as well.
And apparently, by far, battery swapping trucks saw particularly strong growth.
That's accounting for nearly one-third of approximately 30000 new energy-heavy trucks sold nationwide in the first three months of 2025.
And, generally speaking, the data that I'm citing from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers also suggest that sales of new energy heavy-duty trucks in China reached 82000 units in 2024.
That's a year-on-year increase of 140%. with a market penetration rate of over 13%.
So we're seeing a growing market.
We're seeing a booming industry that's coming up with a lot of new ideas in terms of how they can make new energy trucks more diverse.
Anything that grows 140% or more year on year, they're doing something right somehow.
Yeah, so Sany.
So they sold 880 electric heavy trucks.
They were shipped overseas from a port here in China and it was the largest single export shipment of Chinese electric heavy trucks ever.
And as I mentioned before, so that was 880.
And I think in the previous year, in 2025, the country shipped 877 new energy trucks in total.
So now I want to talk and I know we've been talking about this for a while, but I want to finish with the potential impact on the international market.
Because that order of 880 or 883 or however many it was, it was somewhere in that area.
That order of that number of electric trucks from Saini kind of suggests that the international market is.
Already willing to make the switch or at least one order was willing to make that switch.
Exactly.
And I mean, when it comes to this jump, I mean, it's not only a win for one company in particular.
I think he sort of says something about the industry development.
I mean when it comes to seeing what's happening here in China, not only in technological wise, but also when it comes to economics that we touched on.
You know the costs are coming down.
Not only the prices of the trucks are coming down, but also the operational costs.
The operational costs are also coming down.
That means for a lot of companies, for sectors that needs a lot of these heavy trucks, for example, imports in mining, in regional freight.
They could significantly lower that transportation costs.
And that means, for instance, other countries, for instance countries in Southeast Asia, for instance.
It's an opportunity for them to think about.
Maybe this can be a viable solution as well.
Not only can bring down the cost, but also is good for the environment, good for the climate.
So that's why, for internationally, the international market is also watching what's happening on the Chinese market, what the Chinese manufacturers are doing.
I think in the year 2025, China produced more than 400000 electric trucks annually.
That's accounting for over 90 of global production.
And the electric heavy truck... Essentially all of them.
Yes, so that means that a lot of international partners or watching what's happened in China.
What changes are these 400000 electric trucks can bring to the industry and to the market?
And also when it comes to different solutions to these heavy truck problem challenges.
In the past, a lot of manufacturers claim, for instance, hydrogen won't work as a solution for this and that reason.
But now we are seeing more Chinese manufacturers are also producing hydrogen-powered trucks.
That means there must be doing something right.
So there are also people watching to see whether Chinese manufacturers are able to make some differences here.
Well, I mean, if China's electric car industry is any kind of guide in terms of what we can expect from this big truck electric big truck move, the trajectory could be really significant.
The electric vehicle exports grew from what around 2-3 billion US in 2020 to almost 60 billion US in 2025.
So if we see the electric truck path go on the same path as the passenger electric vehicles, we could be in for some very, very big news.
