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A truck's price tag tells a buyer surprisingly little. What actually wins an order is a spreadsheet that looks five years ahead, and the numbers inside it are moving faster than many fleets expected.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Running a truck in the United States cost an average of $2.336 per mile in 2025, up 3.4% and the highest figure in the report's history, according to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI).
For fleets on thin margins, that number explains a lot. Buyers rarely ask what a truck costs on delivery day. They ask what it will cost per mile over its whole working life, and the method they use to answer is total cost of ownership, or TCO.
It is also the number that will decide how fast electric trucks spread, and the headlines about it are often less tidy than they sound.
The Number Behind the Number
TCO adds up everything a vehicle costs over the years a fleet keeps it, then subtracts what it can be sold for at the end. Financing or purchase, fuel, maintenance and repair, insurance, permits, tolls, downtime and tax effects all go in. For an electric truck, buyers also count the charging equipment and the power connection at the depot. The idea is simple. The difficulty is that half the inputs are forecasts.
Where the Money Actually Goes
The cost breakdown is the least glamorous and most revealing part of the debate. In ATRI's 2025 data, fuel held steady at about 48 cents per mile, while driver pay and benefits came to $1.028 per mile, the first time they passed a dollar. Repair and maintenance cost 40.4 cents per mile. By our arithmetic, fuel and maintenance together make up roughly 38% of the total. That is the slice where an electric truck can save money, though electricity still has to be paid for and not all servicing disappears. Drivers, insurance and tolls cost the same whatever powers the vehicle. (These are US figures; other markets will differ.)
Put plainly, the electric case is a trade: a higher purchase price against savings within barely more than a third of operating costs. That is why the promise of “parity” deserves a closer look than it usually gets.
Three Dials that Swing the Result
Miles make the case: Trucks that work hard repay a premium faster. In the UK's Electric Freightway trial, fleets covering more than half a million zero-emission miles found that cost parity with diesel arrived after five years under certain conditions, with higher-mileage operations benefiting more.
Diesel's bad year: A 2026 study of Saudi road freight found that relative energy prices dominate cost outcomes, while carbon pricing and grid decarbonisation mainly affect emissions. The world has just run a live test. After the Iran conflict and Strait of Hormuz closure pushed diesel prices up by roughly 30% globally, modelling by C40 Cities, Arup and the University of Exeter shows that a sustained rise of that size would bring electric-truck cost parity forward by five to seven years. That is a model rather than an observed result, but it shows how much rides on a single input.
The resale question nobody can answer. This is the murkiest line on the sheet. Buying leaves all of the residual risk with the fleet from day one. Analysts add that uncertainty in the wholesale market for used EVs clouds a true TCO analysis. Buyers are being asked to price an asset whose second-hand market barely exists.
A Market Split in Two
Parity is not arriving evenly. China accounts for 80% of electric freight sales and has already reached TCO parity between battery-electric and diesel vehicles. A University of Exeter and ICCT report found that medium- and heavy-duty trucks in China, and vans in India and China, are already cheaper over their lifetimes than diesel, with parity expected before 2033 elsewhere. Falling battery prices are a big part of the story: lithium iron phosphate battery costs fell 86% between 2013 and 2024.
The duty cycle splits the market again. The Saudi study found that medium-duty electric trucks in depot-based fleets are already competitive, while heavy-duty long-haul trucks approach parity only when the diesel-to-electricity price ratio widens or standardised corridor charging is available. Return-to-base work goes first. Long-haul waits on energy prices and infrastructure that no single fleet controls.
The Buyer's Question Changes
The question on the table is shifting from “which truck?” to “which route, at which energy price, with which resale assumption?” That pulls new players into the room: utilities supplying depot power, lenders and lessors carrying residual risk, and city authorities setting access rules. The same C40, Arup and Exeter modelling found that ambitious city-level action can advance national TCO parity by more than a year, with the largest gains in the heavy-duty segments. Procurement, once a fleet manager's call, is becoming a negotiation among several parties.
emBRWace Perspective
Treat every “cost parity” headline as a claim to be tested. It is a forecast that depends on energy prices, utilisation and resale value, and one shift in any of them can reverse the result. The stronger reading of the evidence is that electric trucks win today on specific duties in specific markets, and that the rest of the industry is waiting on inputs it cannot control. Expect the next contest to be over who carries the resale risk, through leasing, battery-as-a-service or manufacturer buy-back offers, because that is the input buyers trust least.
emBRWace Explains
TCO in one line: (purchase or finance payments + energy + maintenance + insurance + infrastructure + downtime) − resale value = what the truck really costs.
Watch these four levers: annual mileage, the diesel-to-electricity price ratio, years held, and resale value.
Thought to Take Away
The cheapest truck to buy is rarely the cheapest to own, and “cheaper to own” only ever holds for a particular route, energy price and holding period.
Sources: ATRI, Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update; Electric Freightway report; University of Exeter / C40 / Arup, A City Guide to EV Truck Tipping Points (June 2026); EEIST / ICCT, Driving the Transition to Zero-Emission Trucks; Transportation Research Procedia Saudi study (2026).
