Statement for the Record

National Association of Small Trucking Companies

U.S. House Committee on Transportation and InfrastructureSubcommittee on Highways and Transit

“It’s Electric: A Review of Fleet Electrification Efforts”

April 30, 2024

The National Association of Small Trucking Companies (NASTC) applauds the subcommittee for holding this hearing on the Biden administration’s pie-in-the-sky initiatives pushing all electrification of American transportation, including large trucks.

NASTC is a member-based organization whose 15,000 member companies range from the single-power-unit, owner-operator operating under its own authority to carriers having more than 100 power units, averaging 12 power units. These companies mostly operate in the long-haul, over-the-road, full-truckload, for-hire, irregular-route sector of interstate trucking. NASTC’s members come from the largest segment of America’s long-haul trucking: small motor carrier businesses having fewer than 100 power units.

The recent study by Roland Berger estimates that infrastructure costs alone for fully switching trucking to electric power would cost $1 trillion.* That is more than half a trillion for heavy-vehicle charging infrastructure and nearly half a trillion for bolstering the electric grid infrastructure. We don’t question this research and analysis, but we do observe that well-founded, good-faith financial projections made at one point in time tend to underestimate actual costs, once the funding, planning, permitting, purchasing of supplies, contracting of labor, etc. are ultimately fulfilled and construction begins. Here we are talking about multiple projects, each one facing red tape and delays.

Additionally, projected costs are likely to rise given the adverse effects of inflation, which persists and has worsened lately. Inflation since President Biden took office has substantially reduced the purchasing power of the dollar; the consumer price index has risen about 20% since January 2021, with prices up sharply for gasoline, diesel, and groceries. On that basis, the projected cost to switch trucking to all electric is staggering and likely to significantly exceed $1 trillion by the time costs come due.

The Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandates and subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are matched by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions rules for light and heavy vehicles. These initiatives make it clear that the administration’s ultimate goal is the elimination of internal-combustion vehicles.** Regrettably, those driving these changes are using raw government power—rather than rational, informed, collegial lawmaking—to force American trucking, consumers, and others to give up the option of reliable forms of transportation and energy and to hope and pray that unreliable electric vehicles and power supply will miraculously meet the need.

This hearing delivers a reality check about electrification of U.S. transportation and the trucking sector. Extremist, unrealistic policies must be tempered by acknowledgement of progress already made at tremendous cost to taxpayers and the private sector. These gains include the tremendous clean-air strides our transportation industry has made over the past 40-plus years, such as the implementation of low-sulfur fuel, the implementation of ultralow-sulfur fuel, the diminution of idling time through the use of auxiliary power units (APUs), the implementation of catalytic converters and DEF, and a myriad of fuel efficiency practices in tires and aerodynamics.

Moreover, Chairman Womack states it well, and NASTC associates itself with his opening statement, particularly this, regarding the gross lack of understanding of the recent legislative and executive unilateralism exhibited as to the practicalities:

I respect the rights of a company to decide if it’s in the company’s best interest to electrify their fleet, just like I respect their ability to choose to go in another direction, like natural gas. But it is also important to recognize that many fleets, including owner-operators, will be put at a competitive disadvantage and simply can’t afford to purchase new vehicles, let alone a $400,000 rig.

To add to these challenges, the batteries in these trucks can weigh up to 16,000 pounds, roughly one-quarter of the total allowable weight. That will make already slim margins for payload offset even slimmer. Add in the fact that it takes between 2.9 to 5.7 hours to recharge the battery — that is, if you can find an open and functioning charger. That’s on top of the current challenge we know exists with the truck parking shortage. Less product will move on each truck. And each truck will take longer to get to its destination. This isn’t a recipe for success. (emphasis added)

The Biden administration way is not the American way. The EPA and other federal agencies are imposing a substantial financial and regulatory burden on American industry and citizens, and erecting hurdles to advancements such as building new, cleaner oil refineries and adequate truck parking. Proposed NOx and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals and the timetables for achieving them are wildly overly ambitious, especially in light of the remarkable reductions our trucking sector has already achieved. Effectively, post-2010 heavy-duty trucks release cleaner air into the atmosphere than they take in.

If stated government orders are implemented, many carriers and truckers will opt to keep the vehicle(s) they have for longer than they otherwise would have. Already, small motor carriers and independent owner-operators are precluded from the new-truck market by price. New or used electric vehicles will cost significantly more than do new diesel trucks. 3 For the large percentage of carriers having 20 or fewer trucks, electric vehicles won’t be an option for the foreseeable future. The expensive mandates will cause current vehicles to continue in use as long as possible. The price differential between older, used trucks and the more expensive, newer electric models, once on the used vehicle market, will be key factors in small carriers’ purchasing decisions. The government-caused slower turnover of older commercial trucks and slower uptake of expensive EV models replacing diesel-powered ones through the used-vehicle market, coupled with predictably higher used truck purchase prices and slimmer profit margins, will translate into less reduction of NOx and GHG levels in the atmosphere. The projected health and environmental gains EPA and the White House proffer will not be achieved.

Meanwhile, private vehicles provide a cautionary tale that should be learned both for autos and commercial vehicles. American consumers are voting with their auto choices. 4 In the car, pickup, and SUV markets, less than 8% of last year’s U.S. vehicle sales were EVs; more than 90% of 2023 autos sold were gas-powered or hybrid vehicles. 5 Auto dealers have stocks of EVs crowding the lot—middle-class consumers aren’t buying them. Auto companies lose money on EVs.

Consumers reject EVs for a number of good reasons. EVs are not dependable. Consumers experience about 80% more problems with EVs than with autos run by internal-combustion engines, Consumer Reports found. 6 Consumers complain that electronic features stop working. Batteries die faster in cold weather and sometimes won’t charge. The advertised mileage on an engine charge is often quite shorter in reality. EVs are expensive, even when government-subsidized. Charging batteries costs more than a tank of gas and is much slower. EV maintenance and repairs cost more. For instance, car EV batteries last 5-10 years, costing $5,000 to $15,000 to replace. 7 Resale value is uncertain. (Perhaps the EV makers could develop an aftermarket for scrapped EVs’ batteries to equip consumers’ homes with sufficient electricity generation.)

Furthermore, EVs pose significant hurdles for lower-income people (as well as certain better-off city dwellers), who live in homes without a garage, a driveway, or dedicated or reserved street parking, including apartments or condominiums. Policies to deprive people living in these circumstances, poor or otherwise, of convenient, affordable internal-combustion-auto transportation will face the harshest consequences of an EV hegemony that has outlawed gasoline-powered vehicles. 

Their batteries make EVs substantially heavier than gas-fueled cars, making EVs a danger to lighter weight vehicles, human beings, and property in accidents. EVs pose greater risk of catching fire. Being heavier, EVs degrade roads, adding to pollution.

EVs hog an unfair share of electricity and burden electric infrastructure, risking energy security and reliability while markedly increasing energy consumption. EVs compete for electricity with cryptomining, booming artificial intelligence, and other significant draws on the electrical grid. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s heavy-handed forced closure of functioning power generator stations puts the United States at heightened risk of electricity demand quickly overwhelming supply. This manmade, self- imposed crisis is entirely avoidable and unnecessary. Yet, here we are.

There is serious competitiveness and security risk attached to the electric-or-bust political agenda. Mining minerals for and manufacturing EV batteries cause substantial particulate emissions, and come predominately from rival China or Chinese industry. Further, China continues to use Diesel 2, the precatalytic converter-grade diesel fuel that has long been in disuse in the United States. The current, cleaner-grade diesel fuel used in the United States costs trucking roughly $1 more per gallon than would Diesel 2. Of course, U.S. diesel fuel today is better for the environment. But at this point, it is merely by nominal degrees of “cleaner” air rather than earlier gains already achieved. Presumably, our country’s citizens regard the more expensive U.S. diesel fuel and the costs it adds to their cost of living worth the extra money. Yet, China benefits economically from its use of cheaper, dirtier diesel fuel. Still, the Biden administration and many in Congress continue to push unilateral disarmament, forcibly denying continued usage of readily available, abundant, U.S. fuel resources.

Congress should reject exorbitantly costly, unrealistic mandates to replace fossil fuels and to force foreclosing nearly every other fuel source except for unreliable “green” ones—all driven by government diktat rather than free-market forces and democratic means. The subsidies for EV, wind, solar, and battery solutions to our energy crunch have suffered documented failures. 11 “Green New Deals” and government largesse for electrification and corporate welfare have not and won’t take the place of a free market-based, forward-thinking, ecofriendly evolution into using all power sources to get the job done. In fact, the supposed green goals are pipe dreams: “[T]he vehicles you and I drive, while large in number, sit parked 95% of the time and play a minor role in U.S. transportation emissions. It elides the fact that U.S. transportation emissions
themselves are a small and shrinking share of global emissions.”

Attempts to force U.S. economic sectors such as trucking into manipulated electrification risk sparking a debilitating crisis of wholesale electricity shortages, unreliable private and commercial transportation, and countless EVs without charge sufficient to function. That outcome would spell national crisis in the most unwelcome way. That is the path the current administration has recklessly set the country on. America can do better. This hearing marks a beginning.

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