eTruckwire newsletter #2: The electric truck industry roundup

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German truck driver and content creator Tobias Wagner, also known as “Elektrotrucker,” has started a roughly 45,000 km (28,000-mile) journey around the world in a battery-electric Mercedes-Benz eActros 600. (link)

The plan: about a year, around 30 countries on five continents, and fewer than 80 charging stops.

He set off from IAA Transportation in Hannover on September 20, the same show where I rode in the Euro Semi. His truck, nicknamed “Zazu,” is a series-production eActros 600 4x2 with a camper body, two spare-wheel carriers, and extra headlights in the sun visor.

As of today, 34 days in, Tobias should already be in Azerbaijan, having crossed Georgia, his 9th country, in the past week. You can track his trip on Polarsteps here.

Zazu takes normal 400 kW CCS charging, but also carries an Alpitronic DC unit that lets it charge from AC outlets at up to 43 kW where there's no truck charger around. DHL ships it across the oceans between continents.

After Turkey, the route runs through Central Asia, China and Southeast Asia, then on to Australia, the US and Latin America. Tobias posts updates on his @elektrotrucker YouTube channel.

China built 95% of the world's battery-electric trucks in 2025, according to Strategy&'s new Truck Study 2026. (link)

Electric trucks reached about 8% of global truck production that year. China's own sales jumped from about 10,000 units in 2021 to roughly 230,000 in 2025, and domestic brands captured every one of them.

On a separate note, China reached 28.9% electric heavy-duty truck market share in 2025, as you can find from our e-truck market share tracker on our site.

Globally, battery-electric truck sales are up 18x since 2021, while diesel and other combustion truck volumes fell 17% over the same period.

Cost isn't what's holding Europe back, according to the study.

Now, I usually don’t share projections in our newsletters that much, just because, well, they are trying to predict the future. We tend to track what’s happening now.

But I still found this bit interesting (and specific) enough to share:

Strategy& projects electric trucks will have a lower total cost of ownership than diesel in every major use case by 2030, with Europe's average advantage at about 25%:

Back to the real stats,

Chinese OEMs made more than 96% of the output of the world's top 20 electric truck makers in 2025, led by Shandong with about 55,000 units. Volvo and Daimler Truck, the top Western names on the list, built about 5,000 each.

Strategy& expects Europe's electric truck sales to reach about 90,000 units in 2030 and 250,000 in 2035, up from around 10,000 in 2025. European truckmakers held about 90% of that market in 2025.

Having seen what I saw at the IAA Transportation in September with the 9+ Chinese e-truck makers inbound or already here in Europe (including with local production plans), along with the incoming Tesla Semi… that share is sure to fall. The question is, how fast & where will the market share settle.

🇺🇸 Harbinger has landed the largest bulk order in its (relatively short) history: 2,000 electric trucks for FedEx, in a deal valued at more than $300 million. (link)

How many: 2,000
Trucks: Harbinger electric medium-duty trucks
Deployed by: end of 2027
Total e-fleet: 2,053 Harbinger trucks at FedEx (53 from an earlier order)
Use case: parcel delivery routes

Now, I do keep eTruckwire foucs on heavy-duty only, but this felt significant enough to make an exception for, as we’ve also been covering Harbinger also from their start in ~2021.

Harbinger aims to deliver the full order by the end of 2027 (which is notable on its own!). It builds electric medium-duty truck chassis, and FedEx knows them well: it led Harbinger's $160 million Series C late last year and took 53 trucks from an earlier order.

CEO John Henry Harris shared his fuel math on LinkedIn. A diesel walk-in van doing 100 miles a day, six days a week, at 8 mpg burns about $32,760 a year at California's $8.40 diesel.

The same route electric, at 0.9 kWh per mile and $0.2313 per kWh, comes to about $6,494. That's $26,266 per truck per year before any maintenance savings, per Harris.

🇫🇷 GEODIS has signed a firm order for 110 battery-electric 44-tonne trucks from Renault Trucks and Volvo Trucks, and is building its own charging corridors in France for them. (link)

How many: 110
Trucks: Renault Trucks and Volvo Trucks, 44-tonne
Deployed by: May 2027
Total e-fleet: 190 in GEODIS' European Road Network
Use case: urban deliveries and long-distance transport in France

The corridors will have charging every 250 to 500 km (155 to 311 miles) for GEODIS trucks. It relies on around 60 charging points in France today and plans more than 200 by 2030.

🇨🇭 Swiss retailer OTTO'S is replacing its entire truck fleet with 22 battery-electric Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 trucks for deliveries to its more than 140 stores. (link)

How many: 22
Trucks: Mercedes-Benz eActros 600, Lanz+Marti bodies with drawbar trailers
Total e-fleet: 22, its entire truck fleet
Use case: store deliveries from its Sursee headquarters to 140+ stores

Each truck does more than 500 km (311 miles) on a charge. That covers roughly four out of every five of its daily tours, all of which start from the headquarters in Sursee, where most of the charging power comes from the site's own solar.

"Since the trucks complete two to four tours a day and regularly return to the headquarters in Sursee, they can be charged efficiently there and prepared for their next deployment."
— Mark Ineichen, CEO, OTTO'S (translated from German)

🇧🇪 H.Essers has added 20 electric trucks, ten each from MAN and Mercedes-Benz, bringing its e-truck fleet to 31. (link)

How many: 20
Trucks: 10 MAN, 10 Mercedes-Benz
Deployed by: already in operation
Total e-fleet: 31
Use case: logistics runs, mainly from its Belgian sites

It follows a year-long pilot with six electric trucks from three makers, and H.Essers wants 15% of its fleet to be electric by 2030. Installed charging capacity at its Genk and Bergen op Zoom sites is going up to 2.7 MW.

H.Essers driver Inez Selis on her first electric drive:
"Once you've driven electric, you don't really want to go back to a diesel truck."

🇩🇪 Amazon took delivery of its first 27 Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 trucks in Germany, out of more than 50 headed for German roads. (link)

How many: 27 delivered, 50+ headed for Germany
Trucks: Mercedes-Benz eActros 600
Deployed by: first 27 handed over in September
Total e-fleet: 200+ eActros 600 on order for Europe
Use case: middle-mile runs between fulfillment centers and urban areas

These are part of a 200+ unit order signed in early 2025, the largest electric truck deal in Amazon's history. Most of this e-fleet goes to the UK. Amazon is putting more than €1 billion ($1.18 billion) into electrifying its European transport network, over €400 million of that in Germany.

The eActros 600 does 500 km (about 310 miles) at 40 tonnes on 600+ kWh of LFP battery, and charges 10-80% in around 70 minutes at 400 kW.

🇪🇺 JUNA, the electric-truck-as-a-service joint venture between Scania and sennder, has passed 100 electric trucks on European roads. (link)

That’s around 110 trucks across Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands, with about 150 expected by the end of the year.

JUNA's model pairs shippers and freight forwarders looking to cut emissions with the carriers who actually run their routes, supplying the electric trucks, charging and route/usage analysis, technical support, and a pay-per-use structure so carriers don't have to buy or finance the vehicles outright.

DHL also signed Bavarian carrier Pflaum to a five-year, 20-truck JUNA deal, the first step in electrifying the carriers it subcontracts, run through its Partner Store program. (link)

How many: 20
Trucks: JUNA's Scania electric trucks, as a service
Deployed by: five-year contract, start not disclosed
Total e-fleet: 65 at Pflaum by the end of 2026, with 45 of its own
Use case: freight for DHL as a subcontracted carrier

Pflaum CEO Matthias Schellenberger said it lets them “run these trucks for DHL at a comparable cost, without carrying the investment or the resale risk ourselves.”

“We build long-term partnerships with industry players like DHL, and then, together with them, we bring their subcontractors into the transition one by one. That's what this agreement is: DHL, Pflaum, and JUNA committed to each other for five years, and that's how we're building one of Europe's largest electric truck fleets.”
— Johan Kjellner, COO at JUNA

DHL intends to use the Partner Store model to help other subcontracted carriers make the transition to electric trucks.

🇺🇸 HMD Trucking is buying 50 Tesla Semis to join its fleet of nearly 700 diesel big rigs across Illinois and Indiana. (link)

How many: 50
Trucks: Tesla Semi
Total e-fleet: 50, next to nearly 700 diesel trucks
Use case: freight across Illinois and Indiana, charging at its own Chicago chargers and Tesla Megachargers

Founder and CEO Henry Malukas told MotorTrend at the Semi rollout event that he expects electric trucks to eventually replace HMD's whole fleet, which is almost entirely diesel Peterbilts today.

His case leans on lower maintenance and fuel costs, and on Midwest winters:

"In the wintertime, we get to 10 below zero or even 20 below. And it’s not much different than 100 years ago; we’re still running with 20 people in the yard with fires [to keep them warm] to help start the trucks. Or we have the trucks running overnight. This Semi is going to change that big time."
— Henry Malukas, Founder and CEO of HMD Trucking

He's upfront about the trade-off. A Semi left outside overnight without being plugged in loses about 20% of its charge in the first half hour of driving while it preheats.

I wouldn’t take the 20% with full confidence because as far as I know their real fleet experience with Semi has been limited thus far, but I would be very curious where the usual average lands after they’ve run the fleet in the winters.

Malukas explained their thinking of the trade-off: “You lose some range, but it’s much easier to lose the range than to have all these people around to make sure we’re able to start the diesel trucks or let them idle all night. We have to have security guards for the yard, all the people … there’s a lot involved until five or six in the morning before the trucks pull out to deliver the peanut butter.”

🇬🇧 Tesla is hiring a Business Development Manager for the Semi, based in London. (link)

The role centers on winning and supporting Semi fleet customers: turning leads into contracts and guiding them through onboarding, commissioning and delivery of both trucks and charging.

Tesla Semi’s central seating position should come in handy for the market entry!

We also just covered how another fresh 55 Tesla Semis were seen at the factory — it seems the production is picking up.

There’s a lot more happening in the autonomous trucks’ space, also very actively in the US, but… for some reason, most of the deployments (at least in the US) aren’t using electric trucks for the autonomous runs yet. That’s why we’re here talking of just a select few of them,

…like Einride.

🇺🇸 Einride's cab-less, driverless electric trucks are now running daily freight operations in Ohio, with EASE Logistics using two of the Level 4 trucks to move freight between its warehouses in Marysville. (link)

They run scheduled routes on EASE property and local public roads with no one in the cab. A remote operator monitors each truck off-site and can step in if needed.

The data (miles driven, loads moved, uptime) will feed talks with the Ohio and Indiana transportation departments about scaling autonomous freight across the region.

The Einride-EASE deployment is part of the Truck Automation Corridor Project, an $8.8 million, multi-year initiative launched in 2021 by ODOT, DriveOhio and INDOT to prepare Ohio and Indiana's interstates for automated freight.

🇩🇪 Einride and Lidl have put a cab-less autonomous electric truck into daily operation on a public road in Germany, with no driver or safety operator on board. (link)

It runs in Edermünde, near Kassel, between a Lidl distribution center and a nearby store in a ~400m (1,312ft) route, under the country’s first permit of its kind from the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).

Up to 15 pallets a run, up to three runs a day, and more than 3,000 pallets expected over the four-month pilot.

Einride is also teaming up with NVIDIA to evaluate Alpamayo, the chipmaker's AI reasoning driving model, for the Einride Driver, aiming to become the first trucking company to deploy it on NVIDIA Hyperion. (link)

The model will first run in "shadow mode", live but without controlling the truck, so its outputs can be measured against Einride's own planner and human drivers.

A live road evaluation is planned for the second half of 2027, with Einride's safety architecture keeping full authority over the truck.