Break-and-charge: Leveraging EU regulations to enhance electric truck competitiveness

The electrification of trucks progresses slowly, with extended charging times as a major concern for transportation companies. In the comparison of electric versus diesel trucks, an aspect often neglected is that regulations on driver working hours affect both types of trucks. In particular, mandatory break times offer opportunities for electric trucks to be charged while drivers rest and, therefore, without necessarily implying additional time over the traditional route duration. To this aim, this paper develops a mathematical programming model that allows to synchronize break times of the drivers with charging times of the trucks. We implement this model using data on real-world truck specifications and charging station infrastructure from Northwest Germany. Our results indicate that under average conditions, the current features of batteries and charging stations are sufficient for electric trucks to perform routes at very similar times as combustion engine trucks. We also study how variations in features such as usable battery size or charging rates due to aging or ambient conditions affect route duration. Our results show that in these cases synchronization of charging and break times is crucial to keep the competitiveness of electric trucks with respect to diesel trucks.