Electric trucks made up 50.3% of all heavy trucks sold in China in September. That’s 33,100 in a single month, up 37% from a year ago, while the overall heavy-truck market shrank by 21%. The specialized website Electrek dug up some numbers, and the results are telling.
In 2024, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) accounted for 13.6% of heavy trucks (12 tons or more) sold in China. In 2025, sales nearly tripled to 231,100 units, up 182%, for a 28.9% share.
Through the first nine months of 2026, China sold 226,400 electric heavy trucks, up 64%, for a 38.1% share. That’s already almost as many as in all of 2025, with a quarter still to go. In tractors, the big rigs that pull long-haul trailers, the September share hit 64.5%.
That’s well ahead of Beijing’s own plan. This year, 11 government bodies set a target of 40% new-energy heavy-truck sales by 2030, along with 1.6 million on the road, 30,000 km of zero-carbon freight corridors, and about 3,000 charging and swap stations. The market blew past that sales target four years early on a monthly basis, and battery producer CATL now says new-energy trucks will be half of China’s annual truck sales by 2028.
The trucks themselves are domestic. XCMG led the segment in 2025 with a 15.4% share, ahead of SANY and FAW Jiefang, and the top three held 42.9% of the market. CATL supplied 60% of the batteries.
Eating diesel and LNG
The reason for switching to electric power is easy to understand. It all comes down to cost. In most uses, an electric heavy truck in China is now cheaper to own and run than a diesel one, and fleets run that math every day. China’s diesel demand is on track to fall by about 230,000 barrels per day this year, and battery- and natural-gas-powered trucks are doing most of the work.
The charging time is the other objection, and China’s answer is swapping. CATL’s Qiji brand operated about 300 heavy-truck swap stations at the end of 2025 and plans 900 by the end of this year and 2,000 in 2027.
In August, it agreed to pay 2.56 billion yuan (about $370 million) for nearly 25% of Qiyuan Green Power, China’s largest heavy-truck swap operator with more than 1,600 charging and swap stations. Its new standardized packs hold 432 kWh and 513 kWh and can be swapped in about five minutes. CATL is already taking the swapping model to Europe with Octopus Energy.
For years, liquefied natural gas (LNG) was the alternative to diesel trucks in China. LNG trucks took nearly 30% of the market in 2024, when gas was much cheaper than diesel.
Now they’re losing to batteries. LNG trucks had a 37% share of heavy-duty registrations in March, against 23% for electric. By July, electric was at 47%, and LNG had collapsed to 11%. Monthly LNG truck registrations fell from more than 30,000 to about 6,200. So China is skipping the ‘bridge fuel’ phase for trucks almost as fast as it started. By the end of this year, 8% of China’s total heavy truck fleet will already be electric.
How about Europe and the U.S.?
Europe is growing fast from a tiny base. ACEA data shows 5,120 heavy electric trucks (16 tons and up) registered in the EU through September, up 59.9%, for a 2.5% share. That’s up from 1.7% a year ago, but diesel still took 91.7% of all EU truck registrations.
A few countries stand out. Switzerland is at 24%, Norway at 14.4%, the Netherlands at 11.1%, and Sweden at 10.3%. Germany registered the most units at 1,722, but that’s only a 4.2% share.
The U.S. doesn’t publish an official electric ‘Class 8’ sales figure. The best indicator is the recent order for 2,500 Tesla Semis through Zet Scale, which would roughly double the number of electric Class 8 trucks on U.S. roads. Against about 230,000 Class 8 trucks sold per year, the electric share is well under 1%.
Purchasing price is still the big difference, as well in Europe and even more so in the U.S. The ICCT puts the median electric Class 8 tractor in the US at $411,200, against $172,500 for diesel. Federal tax credits for commercial EVs ended in 2025, and California shelved the rule that would have required fleets to buy zero-emission trucks.
In Europe, the purchase price for an electric truck is still oscillating between €250,000 and €450,000, while a diesel model comes in at €100,000 to €150,000. Nevertheless, the NGO Transport & Environment has already calculated that the TCO for a truck over its whole lifespan is lower in certain European countries, and that number is growing.
China shows that it is possible
Everyone argued for years about whether large electric trucks could work. Range, weight, charging, cost. China settled it the boring way. It got the price of a battery-electric heavy truck close enough to diesel, built swap stations along freight routes, and let fleet operators do what fleet operators always do: pick the cheapest truck per kilometer.
And the result is showing up where it matters, in oil demand. Trucks are where diesel lives. Displacing a quarter of a million barrels a day in one year, with electric trucks still only around 8% of the fleet, means we’re still early on this curve.
Another threat?
Europe at least already has the regulation, and its best markets, at 10% to 24%, are roughly where China was in 2024 and 2025. The question (again) now is how long Chinese truck makers will still stay home. SANY and BYD already sell electric trucks in Europe, and CATL is building the swap network for them. If those trucks can come close to China’s pricing, how long can Western truck makers keep charging two times as much for diesel?
