When it comes to the electrified future of transportation, passenger vehicles get all the love. Automakers are eager to sell you their latest and greatest muscled up EVs, like Ford’s electric version of the F-150 truck. General Motors makes electric Hummers now. Tesla, and its fan base, exists. Regulators are helping out: California this week formalized its plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and passenger trucks by 2035.
Commercial vehicles, that less glitzy segment of the auto industry, get less attention but also need reinventing to stop or at least slow climate change. Medium- and heavy-duty trucks alone—that is, weighing between 19,500 and 60,000 pounds—account for 7 percent of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Gas and diesel trucks emit smog- and soot-forming nitrogen oxides, or NOx, which are linked with asthma and even premature death—affecting an estimated 72 million Americans who live near freight routes, according to the US government. Closer to home for many city dwellers, the rise of ecommerce could mean 36 percent more delivery vehicles in the world’s largest cities by 2030, according to a recent World Economic Forum report, and a similar increase in their carbon emissions. Meanwhile, in the US, commercial vehicles are projected to decarbonize more slowly than passenger cars, in large part because it’s so expensive to develop and buy heavier duty electric technology.
Now some provisions of the new federal climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, take aim at those commercial vehicles. The law’s tax credits for buyers of electric passenger vehicles have won widespread attention, but the support it offers for buying commercial electric vehicles could be more significant.
Read more at Wired
Photo Credit: Mr.choppers via Wikimedia Commons
