A new TwentyForty report finds manufacturers keep their used electric trucks rather than sell them, so no realised value is ever produced. It calls on government to stop underwriting the number and pay for it to exist.
Manufacturers can’t say what a used electric truck is worth, and the way the market is built means nobody is finding out, according to What’s It Worth?, a 12 Pillars of Change report published today by TwentyForty, the operator-led freight decarbonisation organisation.
Three manufacturers price the same asset three different ways: off a diesel proxy, a capital-cost formula, or the new lease price. None of the three methods has a realised electric sale behind it. One manufacturer declined to price its used stock three times.
The report finds the reason in how the market has responded. All the manufacturers TwentyForty spoke to keep their used electric trucks, each through a different instrument, and independent operators re-rent or repower inside their own fleets. Each choice is sensible. Together they mean the truck never changes hands, so no used price is ever set. Outside the manufacturers’ own finance arms, no lender interviewed for the report writes a residual value on an electric truck.
The cascade government is counting on hasn’t started
DfT’s HGV CO2 consultation rests small operators’ route to zero emission on used trucks cascading down from larger fleets. So do the RHA and TransiT. For diesel, the report measures that cascade in DfT’s own data: the used fleet took 8.4 to 10 years from each Euro mandate to reach a majority, with an open used market, price discovery and an export route in place. On the evidence gathered, electric has none of the three.
The report also counts the operators the cascade is meant to reach. 29,744 operators hold Restricted O-licences and nothing else, 47.5% of GB’s licensed operators, on a median authorisation of two vehicles. Most aren’t hauliers. They’re builders, merchants, farmers, waste firms and plant hirers, spread across every traffic area.
The grant points the wrong way
The truck grant is paid on the new vehicle, and the used vehicle is priced off the new one. OZEV’s own subsidy assessment says nearly new residuals may fall as a result, while claiming a well-stocked used market as a benefit in the same document. OZEV also found no market failure in finance. Six months later, Transport Scotland found lenders can’t price residuals. The report says both are half right: finance is available, finance against a residual isn’t.
Twelve actions, three of them free
The report sets out twelve actions by named owner. It doesn’t ask government to guarantee a residual or for more grant. Three of the actions cost nothing:
- DfT splitting its vehicle keeper statistics by fuel, so used electric trucks changing hands can be counted every year.
- OZEV publishing the used-value monitoring it committed to in the grant’s subsidy assessment.
- DfT saying whether its battery variability study exists, and publishing it if it does.
The report also calls on Defra to give Great Britain the battery access right Northern Ireland already has under Article 14 of the EU Batteries Regulation, which lets whoever bought a battery read its state of health and names residual value as a purpose. It says public money that touches a residual, including from the National Wealth Fund, should buy a realised value on the record with battery data attached. Its lead recommendation is a structured long lease across a book of trucks big enough to pool the risk, with Scotland’s new Zero Emission Truck Fund as the place it gets tested.
Jamie Sands, founder of TwentyForty, said:
“We run battery-electric artics every day. Ask me what one’s worth used and I can’t tell you. Nobody can, and the people who’d need to prove that wrong told us first.
“Everyone says the data will sort it out. But the trucks never change hands, so the data never gets made. That’s not any one company’s fault. Every manufacturer is doing the sensible thing. Add it up and the number stays hidden, while the smallest operators wait on a cascade that hasn’t started.
“So we’re not asking government to underwrite the number. We’re asking it to pay for the number to exist. Three of the asks cost nothing. Start there.”
The report includes a section setting out what would prove its findings wrong. Corrections and answers to its open questions will be added to the report, dated, as they arrive.
What’s It Worth? is available at https://twentyforty.uk/twelve-pillars/whats-it-worth.
