Report Identifies Serious Barriers to Electrifying U.S. Fleets

Fully electrifying the nation’s transportation fleets would pose significant financial and logistical challenges, according to a research report.

In a Dec. 6 report, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) identified three core issues that could render full electrification impractical:

• The strain all those electric vehicles would put on the nation’s electric grid
• The volume of raw materials necessary to produce that many vehicles
• The infrastructure necessary to charge all of those trucks

In its summary of the report, ATRI explained that the U.S. electric grid would have to be overhauled to keep all the additional electric vehicles charged. It noted that “domestic long-haul trucking would use more than 10 percent of the electricity generated in the country today.” When you add freight trucks, that number climbs to 14 percent. If you include passenger vehicles, it would account for 40.3 percent of all electric consumption in the U.S. ATRI added that “some states would need more than 50 percent of current electricity generation to meet vehicle travel needs.”

Another concern is the tens of millions of tons of raw materials that would have to be mined to replace existing fleets with battery-electric vehicles, ATRI said. Obtaining all of that cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel would consume between 8.4 percent and 64.4 percent of the global reserves of these minerals, according to the report, and would take anywhere from 6.3 years to nearly 35 years. This would likely result in increased domestic mining.

Lastly, ATRI concluded that full electrification would require “more chargers than there are truck parking spaces in the U.S.,” according to a release on the report. And turning those parking spaces into charging platforms would cost more than $35 billion, or $112,000 per space.

Given these issues, ATRI determined that “vehicle electrification in the U.S. will be a daunting task that goes well beyond the trucking industry – utilities, truck parking facilities and the vehicle production supply chain are critical to addressing the challenges identified in this research.” Because of this, ATRI said the market “will require a variety of decarbonization solutions and other powertrain technologies alongside battery electric.”