EVwire brief: Europe's battery-electric truck (BET) market is growing far slower than expected, with actual BET growth coming in 80% short of what Strategy& projected in its 2024 truck study.
China is moving the other way. BETs reached about 8% of global truck production in 2025, but China built 95% of them, and its BET ramp-up is running 150% ahead of the earlier forecast. The US fared worst of the three regions, landing 95% below projections.
The gap isn't about cost. According to the new Truck Study 2026, BETs will have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than diesel trucks in every major use case by 2030, with Europe's average advantage at about 25%. What's holding Europe back is charging infrastructure and fleet confidence.
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Strategy&'s comparison of its 2024 forecast against actual sales shows just how far the three regions have drifted apart:
Here are the highlights from Strategy&'s Truck Study 2026.
China builds almost every electric truck
Global BET sales are up 18x since 2021, while diesel and other combustion truck volumes fell 17% over the same period. China's BET sales alone jumped from about 10,000 units in 2021 to roughly 230,000 in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of around 110%, and domestic brands captured every one of them.
Chinese OEMs accounted for more than 96% of the output of the world's top 20 BET 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.
Here's Strategy&'s ranking of the world's top 20 BET makers in 2025, with Western brands like Volvo and Daimler Truck shown in grey near the bottom:
Electric trucks win on cost by 2030
Strategy&'s 2030 TCO model puts BETs ahead of both diesel and hybrid trucks in Europe across all four truck use cases it studied. The biggest gaps show up in depot-heavy work: a distribution BET comes in at €0.76 per km (about $1.44 per mile) versus €1.06 (about $2.01 per mile) for diesel, while line-haul BETs land at €0.62 per km (about $1.18 per mile) versus €0.80 (about $1.52 per mile).
Long-haul is the closest race, at €0.68 per km (about $1.29 per mile) for a BET versus €0.73 (about $1.39 per mile) for diesel. Maintenance is a big part of the story, with Strategy& assuming €0.057 per km (about $0.11 per mile) for a BET versus €0.105 per km (about $0.20 per mile) for a diesel truck. Hybrids, meanwhile, barely move the needle against diesel in any use case.
Here's how the 2030 cost per kilometer stacks up for diesel, hybrid and electric trucks across the US, Europe and China:
Charging infrastructure is Europe's bottleneck
Strategy& points to depot grid access, public charging availability and local transformer capacity as the factors that decide how quickly fleets can go beyond pilots. In Germany, the report counts roughly 90 fewer operational truck charging spots in 2026 than planned under the EU's Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), which targets 350 spots by 2030.
The study also includes this comment from a German logistics fleet operator:
"The economy is challenging, and without guaranteed grid capacity, I cannot justify locking capital into electric trucks now."
Here's how Germany's truck charging buildout is tracking against the AFIR plan:
European truckmakers face pressure at home
Strategy& expects Europe's BET sales to reach about 90,000 units in 2030 and 250,000 in 2035, up from around 10,000 in 2025. European OEMs held about 90% of the region's BET sales in 2025, but the study projects their share will slip by more than five percentage points over the next three years.
Chinese brands such as BYD and SANY, along with US automaker Ford, are setting up production in Hungary, Turkey and other locations to sell BETs in Europe. Strategy& says Europe's truckmakers will need to lean on build quality, service network density, charging and energy offerings, and software to defend their home market.
Strategy&'s outlook for BET sales by OEM origin shows the contrast between the two home markets:
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Context:
Europe's slow overall ramp-up hasn't stopped some of its biggest logistics players from moving to full electric fleets. GEODIS recently ordered 110 Volvo and Renault electric trucks for France, a deal set to grow its European Road Network's electric fleet to 190 vehicles. JUNA, the electric-truck-as-a-service venture between Scania and sennder, has passed 100 electric trucks, and H.Essers just brought its own e-truck fleet to 31.
The Chinese competition Strategy& warns about is already showing up on European soil, too. BYD used IAA Transportation 2026 to debut its ETT 44 tractor, which pairs 1.5 MW Flash Charging with a 372-mile range. This means that Europe's truckmakers are trying to grow a slow home market while a better-scaled rival moves in next door.
Here’s Strategy&’s study:
Source: Strategy& Truck Study 2026
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