Comparative Assessment of Charging Alternatives for Freight Carriers Using Scenario-Based Multi-criteria Evaluation

Abstract

The road freight transport market accounts for 40 \% of the carbon dioxide emissions of the transport sector globally. To reduce these emissions, battery electric trucks (BETs) have the greatest potential as they are zero-emission vehicles. However, compared to the private electric vehicle market, this market faces significant implementation barriers, as seen from the low BET sales. This is mainly due to the optimized market and low profit margins limiting freight carriers from investing in BETs. Furthermore, BETs face serious operational challenges due to long charging times and low operational flexibility. The way to charge the BET plays a big role in finding solutions to these challenges. In recent years, new technologies such as Electric Road Systems (ERS) and battery swapping have been developed next to depot charging and on-road charging. This study gains insight into the preferences of different freight carriers for charging alternatives, using a scenario-based multi-criteria decision analysis(MCDA). Four charging alternatives: depot charging, on-road charging, ERS, and battery swapping, are compared from a freight carrier's perspective on ten criteria identified through literature review, expert interviews, and a survey. The criteria are: Investment costs, operational costs, lifetime of the battery, charging time, operational flexibility, payload capacity, emission reduction, pioneering, complexity of implementation, and strategic policy alignment. To compare the charging alternatives, the criteria weights were obtained through the best-worst method and the analytic hierarchy process, and the performance of the alternatives on the criteria was calculated for daily distance use cases. These performances and weights were combined to arrive at a final ranking of alternatives. This was done for different freight carrier groups based on daily distance, sectors, company sizes, and countries of operation. The results show that financial and operational criteria were considered most important by all the segments of freight carriers. Furthermore, depot charging appeared to be the preferred alternative in most cases, and battery swapping scored best for larger daily distances. However, in almost all freight carrier groups, depot charging, ERS, and battery swapping had similar scores. This result advocates for stakeholders to consider investing in the charging alternatives to give the freight carrier the possibility to choose the charging alternative that is best for them. On-road charging had the lowest score for all the freight carrier groups. This result mismatches with the current investments in the charging alternative and showcases the need to reconsider these investments. Due to the number of criteria and the difficulties in obtaining many responses from freight carriers, the criteria performance and weights can be studied in more detail in future research. Also, using better weighing and evaluation methods and improved research on the four alternatives in a similar scenario can improve the quality of the results in future studies. Also, looking at the problem from different perspectives in future studies can provide great insight into which charging alternatives will shape the future of BETs.