Battery-electric's trucking reality -- parking shortage will 'look a whole lot worse'

In a previous edition of Overdrive Radio, News Editor Matt Cole dug into the American Transportation Research Institute's close look at the life-cycle emissions associated with the production and operation of diesel, battery-electric and hydrogen-powered trucks. As noted in the very title of that past episode -- "How politics and PR cloud 'zero-emissions' reality" -- the research in some ways cut through the hype around electric-vehicle technology, showing such vehicles would be no air-quality panacea when production-associated demands are considered, particularly for battery-electric trucks: 

[Related: Will battery-electric trucks end up a 'black eye' on environmental benefits?]

In today's edition, Cole talks with Jeff Short, ATRI vice president, about follow-up research that poses something of a counterfactual on the way toward throwing down more cold-hard reality around vehicle electrification.

Overdrive Radio sponsor If the entirety of the U.S. vehicle fleet, from owner-operators' heavy tractor-trailers on down to passengers cars, were to suddenly be transitioned to battery-electric, what level of electric power generation would it take? What kind of materials demands would come with all those batteries? What, fundamentally, would the implications be for truckers’ operational realities (including the hours of service) and the infrastructure needs to support them?

As Cole notes at the top of the edition, that infrastructure would necessarily include a whole lot of new electrified parking spaces. "If every truck has to stop and charge," he said, "obviously you've got to have a charger pretty much at every parking spot across the country, and there's already a parking shortage."

Further, if every tractor out there had to stop to charge on the regular for hours at a time, "that parking shortage is only going to look a whole lot worse." Take a listen: