Extract from ABC News
The trucking industry reports "massive interest" in electric trucks to reduce exposure to future diesel price hikes. (Supplied: Australia Post)
In short:
Electric trucks had their strongest ever month of sales in March 2026, although they still account for a small proportion of total sales.
For the first time, electric models are available for the same up-front cost as their diesel equivalents, including for road trains.
What's next?
There are anecdotal reports of a surge of interest in electric trucks as companies seek to reduce their exposure to the risk of future diesel price spikes.
Diesel trucks are the backbone of the national supply chain, but figures buried in recent sales data could mark the beginning of the end for these kings of the road.
Electric trucks had their strongest ever month of sales in March 2026, with 44 sales, an increase of more than 500 per cent on the previous month.
Battery power is still a small fish in a market dominated by diesel, but, for the first month ever, trucks that run entirely on electricity accounted for more than 1 per cent of new truck sales.
And there are other signs of change.
Electric trucks are now available "at price parity with diesel", according to a report by freight-decarbonisation consultants Mov3ment.
That is, some electric trucks now have about the same up-front cost as their diesel equivalents, as well as lower ongoing costs due to fuel savings.
They include the sort of small trucks that do grocery home delivery, to heavy-duty prime movers able to tow a semitrailer for 300 kilometres on a single charge.
This historic price parity has arrived years earlier than predicted.
"Anecdotally, our enterprise customers have all started calling saying we want to accelerate this transition to electric trucks," Tim Washington, CEO of JET Charge, a company that builds truck charging depots, told the ABC.
"This is potentially the start of a hockey stick curve [of truck sales]."
The reason electric trucks have become more affordable sooner than expected is due to a change underway in China that is disrupting energy demand around the world.
How the world's largest trucking market went electric
In the space of five years, electric trucks sales in China went from near zero to over 230,000 in 2025, accounting for more than a quarter of total truck sales.
It is predicted that this year, their sales will surpass those of diesel.
It is estimated this change is denting the country's oil consumption by more than 1 million barrels a day.
The reason for the rapid uptake is a combination of plunging battery prices, competition among manufacturers, and generous government incentives, as well as investment in heavy-vehicle charging infrastructure.
The Deepway Star prime mover is the first all-electric prime mover available in Australia for close to the price of a diesel equivalent. (Supplied: Deepway)
Key highways have become "supercharging corridors" with ultra-fast "megawatt-level" chargers every 50km, able to add 200km of range with 15 minutes of charging.
Now, Chinese manufacturers are looking to expand to overseas markets.
The wave of affordable Chinese-made electric trucks that changed China's trucking industry has reached Australia.
Mov3ment director Mark Gjerek described these trucks as "second-generation", meaning they are designed from the ground up on dedicated electric chassis, rather than converted diesel platforms.
"Second-generation electric trucks are a game changer," he said.
"A first-generation electric truck or diesel platform is about twice the cost of a diesel truck, whereas these trucks are coming in at close to the diesel price."
Lack of chargers holding back switch to electric
But ditching diesel will require more than low-cost electric trucks.
About three quarters of trucks in Australia are the light-duty or medium-size models used for urban delivery.
Urban delivery trucks generally return to a depot overnight, which makes recharging them easier. (Supplied: Linfox/Woolworths)
These metro distribution trucks can be relatively easily replaced with electric equivalents already on the market, JET Charge's Tim Washington said.
"If people ask can we electrify trucking, we say, 'Certainly for last-mile delivery,'" he said.
"There's enough companies already doing this."
But Mark Hammond, the Trucking Industry Council's (TIC) chief technical officer, said access to charging, rather than the cost of trucks, was holding back many urban logistics companies from switching to electric trucks.
Most logistics companies do not own their own depots and so can not install chargers themselves, while a depot owner has little incentive to do this on their behalf.
"Electric trucks for metro delivery make a lot of sense, but the problem is the added cost and burden of having to supply charging infrastructure."
One solution to this is public truck-charging infrastructure.
A project to build three truck-charging hubs with a total of 24 charging bays in Melbourne will cost about $60 million, including $25 million of public funds, according to an announcement last month.
Bigger trucks a bigger challenge
About a fifth of trucks in Australia are prime movers used for "line haul" long-distance bulk transportation of freight between cities and towns.
Battery-powered models are available but have limited applications, Mr Hammond said.
"You'd be lucky to get 300 kilometres on any of the major transport routes before you need probably a two-hour recharge," he said.
More powerful chargers would reduce this time but place a greater strain on the regional power network.
The amount of power required to recharge an electric road train in the space of an hour was about equivalent to that of a small commercial building, which would be more than some towns' spare capacity.
Hundreds of dedicated charging depots would need to be built to electrify intercity freight, and this would be expensive.
On Thursday, the federal government announced a fast-track approvals process for Australia's first zero-emission heavy road freight depot, to be located in Wilton, south-west of Sydney.
A comprehensive heavy freight charging network was still years away, Scott Dwyer, a transport expert at the Institute of Sustainable Futures at UTS, said.
"We're at least five to 10 years behind China," he said.
"We still don't quite have the policy push that we see in other countries."
Planning for future diesel price hikes
Despite these challenges, there is a growing sense the trucking industry is at the threshold of historic rapid change.
Electric trucks are getting more affordable and diesel more expensive, so it is becoming vastly cheaper to use electrons rather than molecules to push freight around cities and about the country.
An electric road train hauling toilet paper from Sydney to Canberra last month reportedly cut energy costs for the journey by 84 per cent.
The prime mover used for the 300km trip cost about $500,000, or a little under twice the price of a diesel prime mover, but new electric models entering the market are available for about $300,000.
Electric prime movers, like this Chinese-made Windrose, are already operating commercially in Australia. (Supplied: New Energy Transport)
With diesel at about $3 a litre, operators of electric road trains stand to save tens of thousands of dollars per year, even assuming they pay a relatively high price to recharge.
Mov3ment's Mark Gjerek said electric trucks had got "massive attention" since the price of diesel spiked, but "I don't know how much will transfer to purchases."
The TIC's Mark Hammond said the impact of the current high diesel prices on truck sales would be properly understood in several months, due to the typical delay between a truck being purchased and then registered. A vehicle sale is only recorded when it is registered.
JET Charge's Tim Washington said: "My view is because of ongoing cost savings, [logistics companies] will all move towards electric.
"They will all go [to electric] really quickly."
These companies probably cannot electrify fast enough to reduce their reliance on diesel during the the current fuel price shock, but they can reduce their exposure to the risk of a hike in diesel prices in a few year's time.
The US and Israel's invasion of Iran has highlighted the danger of relying on global supply chains for fuel.
"Even if the war [in Iran] ends, that momentum [of sales] will continue," he said.
"If we're in a world where there's no rules-based order, anything can happen."
