Batteries dominate future road freight – but hydrogen still has a role to play

In the study Battery-Electric vs. Hydrogen: Modeling the decarbonization pathways and environmental trade-offs of global road freight, published in Advances in Applied Energy, researchers at Chalmers analysed future road freight systems using a global energy model that considers costs, technology choices, energy supply and climate targets.

The results show that battery-electric trucks are the most cost-effective solution across most truck segments, particularly for regional transport. For the heaviest trucks with long daily driving ranges, however, hydrogen continues to play an important role.

“Overall, our research suggests there are strong reasons to pursue multiple fossil-free solutions as the transport sector decarbonises. Relying on parallel pathways can reduce the risk that scaling up a single solution creates new challenges related to limited resources such as minerals, land or water,” says Maria Grahn, Associate Professor in Environmental and Energy Sciences at Chalmers University of Technology.

The researchers also examined how the results change if battery and hydrogen technologies become cheaper more rapidly than expected. When battery costs decline, the model favours a larger share of battery-electric vehicles, including in heavier truck segments. Equivalent cost reductions for hydrogen technologies, however, have only a limited impact on technology adoption.

One unexpected finding is that the model often favours hybrid solutions combining batteries and fuel cells, balancing driving range, energy efficiency and overall cost.

The study was conducted by Fayas Malik Kanchiralla, Maria de Oliveira Laurin, Selma Brynolf and Maria Grahn, all affiliated with the Department of Environmental and Energy Sciences at Chalmers University of Technology.

The researchers also emphasise that neither battery-electric nor hydrogen-powered trucks can become a large-scale climate solution without a substantial expansion of fossil-free electricity generation. The decarbonisation of road freight is therefore closely linked to continued investments in wind and solar power.

“When electrification is key for decarbonising road freight, it is also important to consider how quickly fossil-free electricity generation can be scaled up globally. By embedding lifecycle thinking directly into large-scale energy optimisation modelling, we can identify which pathways are truly sustainable across the entire energy system,” says Fayas Malik Kanchiralla, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher the Department of Environmental and Energy Sciences.