Life cycle assessment of commercial delivery trucks: Diesel, plug-in electric, and battery-swap electric

Abstract

The development of electric delivery trucks has attracted much attention in recent years. The purpose of this study is to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the total cost of ownership (TCO) of light-duty and medium-duty diesel trucks (DTs), plug-in electric trucks (ETs), and battery-swap ETs. A simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) method and a TCO assessment method are used. Numerical results show that the average GHG emission of light-duty ETs is 69% lower than that of light-duty DTs, while that of medium-duty ETs is 9.8% higher than that of medium-duty DTs. As regards TCO, those of plug-in ETs and battery-swap ETs are 37.8% lower and 21% higher than that of light-duty DTs, while for medium-duty trucks, the TCO of plug-in and battery-swap ETs are 6.7% lower and 18.9% higher than that of medium-duty DTs. The main conclusion of this paper is that light-duty plug-in ETs exhibit the best performance in terms of cost saving and GHG emission reduction. Moreover, ETs show more advantages than DTs when the frequency of use is higher or when the driving environment is more congested.