Comparative Assessment of Zero-Emission Technologies for Heavy-Duty Freight: Battery Fast Charging, Battery Swapping, Catenary Electric Road, Inductive Electric Road, Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Internal Combustion, and On-Board CO2 Capture

Jingyuan Zhao and Lewis Fulton

Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis

Abstract: This report presents a comparative assessment of seven zero-emission vehicle and near-zero-emission pathways for heavy-duty freight applications: battery fast charging, battery swapping, catenary electric road systems, inductive electric road systems, hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles (H2ICEVs), and diesel internal combustion engine vehicles equipped with carbon capture and storage (ICEV-CCS). To enable a consistent system-level comparison, we develop a unified techno-economic modeling framework, SHIFT (Systemic Heavy-duty Infrastructure Framework for Transition), which quantifies and contrasts these pathways across multiple key performance indicators, including fuel cost, energy efficiency, levelized system cost, and levelized cost of transport, using a stochastic Monte Carlo simulation framework with bounded techno-economic parameter sampling. The simulations incorporate variations in fleet size, electricity pricing, infrastructure costs, and system efficiencies, generating 10,080 stochastic realizations across technologies, duty cycles, and energy supply configurations. The analysis covers three representative freight applications: short-haul, regional-haul, and long-haul trucking, capturing duty-cycle-specific infrastructure and operational trade-offs. The results suggest that in the early deployment years (e.g., 2030), battery swapping and fast charging show greater potential to achieve lower levelized system costs under small-scale deployment conditions, primarily due to lower capital intensity and better scalability at low fleet utilization. In contrast, electric road systems require substantial initial infrastructure investment but demonstrate strong scalability in high-throughput freight corridors. Among these systems, catenary electric road systems become increasingly favorable for densely trafficked long-haul corridors by 2040, particularly when infrastructure is shared across large aggregated fleets. FCEVs remain economically challenging during early deployment phases, particularly at small scale, due to both vehicle and infrastructure costs. Their competitiveness improves primarily under conditions of rapid scale-up of hydrogen production and refueling infrastructure, higher station utilization, and access to low-cost renewable hydrogen enabled by favorable supply-chain configurations. H2ICEVs provide a transitional alternative by leveraging shared hydrogen refueling infrastructure while requiring lower vehicle capital costs, although their overall efficiency remains lower than that of fuel cell powertrains. More broadly, the long-term viability of hydrogen-based trucking depends critically on the evolution of the hydrogen supply system, with economics improving as low-cost hydrogen from off-grid renewable resources and high-utilization pipeline delivery networks become available. ICEVs equipped with CCS, operating on diesel fuel, represent a conditional decarbonization pathway toward near-zero-emission performance by reducing tailpipe CO2 emissions through on-board carbon capture. However, residual combustion emissions and incomplete capture prevent full zero-emission performance. Overall, these findings aim to offer strategic insights for transportation agencies, utilities, and industry stakeholders, supporting cost-effective infrastructure deployment, resilient energy planning, and targeted policy interventions to accelerate the transition to sustainable freight systems.

Keywords: Engineering; Social and Behavioral Sciences; zero-emission vehicles; heavy-duty; fast charging; swapping; catenary; inductive; hydrogen; electric road; levelized system cost; energy efficiency; well-to-wheel; infrastructure; policy; trucks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-01
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