China sets sights on heavy truck electrification in blow to diesel demand

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-sets-sights-heavy-truck-electrification-blow-diesel-demand-2026-06-15/

By Colleen Howe and Sam Li
June 15, 2026 5:06 AM EDT

Summary

• China targeting EVs to make up 40% of heavy truck sales by 2030
• EVs to make up 20% of heavy truck fleet by 2030
• Trade-in schemes will prioritise EV trucks to boost adoption

BEIJING, June 15 (Reuters) - China rolled out a push to electrify heavy trucks, a policy that is ‌likely to accelerate a shift away from diesel that is cutting into fuel demand even as it creates new opportunities for domestic truck and electric vehicle battery manufacturers.

By 2030, EVs will make up 40% of new heavy truck sales in China and 20% of ​the total fleet, or 1.6 million vehicles, according to a notice on the Ministry of Transport website ​late on Friday. On some short-haul routes around Beijing, the target is 80%.

The target ⁠is the country's first detailed goal for the sector, surpassing Rystad Energy's September forecast that electric heavy trucks ​would account for 9% of China's fleet by 2030.

…

[Moostache]

1. For anyone NOT guzzling the Kool-Aid... China is eating our lunch.

The United States empire is in tatters and the debt is so high that it will end the empire completely if Trump doesn't do more damage first and accelerate the plunge further.

In EVs and battery technology the United States has fallen way behind. We seem to be convinced - by the billionaire nerd class - that AI will be our savior, and have dumped TRILLIONS of dollars into the effort. The truth is we won't 'win' there either. We have sacrificed the American spirit for pseudo-everything. Pseudo-machismo, Pseudo-toughness, Pseudo-intellectuals, Pseudo-journalism... all of it in service of an 80-year old embarrassment of a human being (term applied VERY loosely).

The videos and exposes detailing life in parts of China look like well made propaganda for sure. And there are massive human rights abuses there (as there are hear with ICE and Trump run amok), but on balance, the 21st century is clearly the decline and fall of the American Empire, we will never again attain such heights or power and simultaneously, the ascendency of China into the power vacuum we are leaving behind.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. To a great extent, I blame Reagan and 'W' for our federal fiscal follies

Reagan cut taxes and raised spending to make up for it.

“W" took the “Clinton Surplus” (which mostly was going to build up the Social Security Trust Fund for when the “Boomers” retired) but was projected to pay off the debt by 2012 and gave half of it away in tax cuts.

“W” implied that Social Security was in the hole, and used that supposed mismanagement of Social Security to justify cutting the income to save Social Security. Then, he took us into 2 simultaneous wars (not entirely his fault) but did not let the expense of those wars stand in the way of his tax cuts (entirely his fault.)

His father (in large part) lost his bid for reelection because he was more fiscally responsible than Reagan (he famously failed to keep his pledge, “Read my lips. No new taxes.”) “W.” ignored that, and acted like the problem was that his father had chosen not to invade Baghdad during “The Gulf War.". During the 2000 campaign “W” told people he wanted to go to war with Iraq, and, somehow, when al-Qaeda attacked us, he looked for revenge in Iraq.

The Orange Faced Man in the White House gave away even more money in tax cuts in his first term, and is now following it up with more.

Boosted by rising interest rates, in fiscal year 2025 ≥ 1.2 Trillion Dollars went to “interest Expense” on the National Debt.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/interest-expense-avg-interest-rates/

Where did we get the money from? Essentially, we borrowed it. (“Compound interest” is a bitch when it’s going against you.)

Where did it go to? People who purchase “Treasury Securities.” Who purchases “Treasury Securities?” Well, I can tell you this much, it’s not the poor.

So, the rich are paying less in taxes, allowing them to invest more in “Treasury Securities,” essentially loaning the federal government money they should have paid to the federal government. (Nice racket.)

[NNadir]

3. China has over 1100 coal power plants with close to 100 under...

...under construction. They have more coal power plants than the next 20 nations combined.

Electricity is a thermodynamically degraded form of energy. A Rankine coal plant has roughly a 33% energy efficiency, dependent on ambient temperatures.

Anyone cheering for electrification in China is cheering for additional driving of the ongoing collapse of the planetary atmosphere. In fact they are cheering for coal.

Electrolytic hydrogen which also gets cheering here in reference to China induces a further thermodyamic penalty, as does charging a battery.

My son spent a summer in China and saw more electrical vehicles than anywhere else. However they are dirty vehicles.

China, according to the Electricity Map has a 12 month carbon intensity for its electricity of 485 grams of CO₂/kWh as of this writing.

This is even worse than that of Germany's 343 grams of CO₂/kWh to speak of another coal dependent hell.

France, with a carbon intensity of 31 grams of CO₂ could conceivably "electrify everything" cleanly. China can't and shouldn't unless they can build more than 1000 nuclear plants and do what France did and eliminate coal based power. They are building nuclear plants faster than anyone on Earth, but still not as fast as they are building coal plants.

In China from first concrete to grid connection a nuclear plant is taking about five years and they recently announced they have infrastructure to build 50 at a time. That still puts them 25 years away from clean electricity by eliminating coal. It is, however not enough and thus, in China, for now, "electrify everything" is premature and a recipe for furthering the climate disaster now clearly underway.

Just because the collapse of the United States has made them the world's remaining super power, does not mean we are required to applaud. Super powers, as we know from our own history, if we look in the mirror, easily can make mistakes that the rest of the world can ill afford.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Nuclear Fission plants, like coal plants are about one third efficient.

A new coal plant would be slightly more efficient than a legacy nuclear plant. (It’s not the efficiency that’s the problem, it’s the emissions.)

IEA - World Energy Outlook 2025 - China

[NNadir]

5. This may be mysterious to some people, but I can tell the difference between a nuclear plant and a coal plant.

Last edited Mon Jun 15, 2026, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

While most nuclear plants now operating on the planet are in fact Rankine devices, the difference between the type of plant has to do with the side products released in their operations. This may be surprising, but it is the operative point as to whether - contrary to representations by antinukes that electricity is always "green" - an electric vehicle is clean or dirty.

Recently, in response to one of the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes who run around here, one like present company apparently cannot tell the difference between a nuclear plant and coal plant, I cited a paper I'd used as a reference in one of my posts here on the subject of whether electric vehicles are "green." It contained a graphic on the emissions connected with the fuel (electricity) and the embodied energy of electric cars.

I have noticed that "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke types can be fond of graphics, and happily the post contains one.

I covered a paper written about the energy intensity of electric, hybrid, and internal combustion engine on my grid here:

A paper addressing the idea that electric cars are "green."

From that post, from a paper published a little over two years ago, Cleaning up while Changing Gears: The Role of Battery Design, Fossil Fuel Power Plants, and Vehicle Policy for Reducing Emissions in the Transition to Electric Vehicles Matthew Bruchon, Zihao Lance Chen, and Jeremy Michalek Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (8), 3787-3799, the following graphic, in which environmental destruction associated with batteries has been monetized:

Figure 6. Consequential life cycle air emission externalities per vehicle in 2019, assuming 10% of the light-duty passenger car fleet in PJM’s service area is replaced with PEVs. “ICEV” denotes a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle, “HEV” denotes a standard gasoline hybrid electric vehicle (NiMH battery), “PHEV20” denotes a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with a battery range of 20 miles (Li-ion battery with NMC111 cathode chemistry), and “BEV300” denotes a battery electric with a battery range of 300 miles (Li-ion battery with NMC622 cathode chemistry). “CC” indicates that battery charge schedules are optimally controlled by PJM to minimize system operation costs, and “UC” indicates that battery charging is uncontrolled (i.e., initiated by the vehicle owner as soon as they complete their daily driving and arrive home. “Production” includes disposal and recycling; “Vehicle Use” includes tailpipe emissions and tire and brake wear).

The paper actually refers to the grid on which I live, the PJM grid. On that grid, if one can understand the graphic and what the "green" stuff (electricity production) is - an unfortunate coincidence of color, since on my grid, PJM is decidedly not "green," a 12 month carbon intensity of 418 grams CO₂/kWh, not as bad as China's but close - one can see that what makes an electric car in New Jersey dirtier than an internal combustion engine is the source of electricity, although embodied energy is also included.

Now, even if there are people - and this is surprising to me - who cannot differentiate between a device that is able to contain its byproducts on site, which what a nuclear plant does, and one that dumps its waste indiscriminately into the air, land and water, which is what a coal plant does - I can do so.

The carbon intensity of electricity in France is 31 grams CO₂/kWh over a 12 month period which means that the electricity portion of the graphic above would be 31/418 = 0.07 as large, which means that an electric car in
France would be relatively cleaner than an internal combustion engine.

I'm certainly happy that I can tell the difference between a Rankine cycle nuclear plant and a Rankine cycle coal plant, even if the thermodynamic efficiency is equivalent. It has to do with the difference in the waste profile. A coal plant's waste kills people whenever it operates normally, since to operate, it cannot contain its waste on site. The used nuclear fuel in a nuclear plant, by contrast can be retained, and is retained on site, where it is subject to recovery of its valuable components in the case where scientific illiteracy about the subject is overcome.

Nuclear fuel has sustained high temperatures, much higher than the flame of coal combustion. This suggests that nuclear plants can be designed to utilize high temperature process intensification using heat networks. It does seem from my own BOE calculations as well as some I've encountered that in such a case, the thermodynamic efficiency of a nuclear plant can be doubled, much as the thermodynamic efficiency of combined cycle dangerous natural gas plants - dirty devices nonetheless - have more or less doubled in cases where they run continuously, which gas plants seldom do, but nuclear plants do all the time.

While antinukes prance around assuming in contempt of the laws of physics that electricity is "green" on coal based grids, hyping dangerous ideas about batteries and hydrogen charged or derived from fossil fuels, many modern nuclear engineers are designing a plethora of reactors designed to exploit nuclear heat to recover exergy and raise thermodynamic efficiency. It's hard to keep up with all these designs now.

When my son was entering his nuclear engineering program, I made sure to review with him the difference between heat engine cycles, in particular Brayton vs Rankine cycles. This is because he is a materials scientist as well as nuclear engineer. Brayton nuclear reactors have operated, but regrettably were not designed as combined cycle devices, Brayton and Rankine in sequence. This will change if the world comes to its senses and recognizes nuclear energy for what it is: The last best hope of the human race.

Thank you for your illuminating comment on thermodynamic efficiency, but I hope I've successfully demonstrated the difference between a coal plant and a nuclear plant if it seems mysterious.

By the way, there is one feature that both coal plants and nuclear plants share. Unlike the unsustainable solar and wind garbage people hype as the world burns, both coal plants and nuclear plants are reliable. Nuclear plants are superior to coal plants in this regard, beyond their obvious difference in environmental impact. As I noted the 30 most reliable power plants in the United States are all nuclear plants: Sorted by capacity utilization, a list of the largest power plants in the United States.

The thirty-first highest plant in the United States for capacity utilization is a coal plant is the Keystone coal plant in Pennsylvania, with a capacity utilization of 82.85%, with all the preceding nuclear plants having higher numbers. Only four of the 30 nuclear plants have capacity utilization below 90%. The best, Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant has a capacity utilization of 99.57%.

Since solar and wind plants are not reliable, they cannot, despite much delusional caterwauling to the contrary, replace coal. In fact, since a shut coal plant has to uselessly burn coal to bring up steam pressure before it can turn a turbine on, a coal plant is made worse if it is turned off for a while and restarted when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Have a wonderful evening.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. I'm sorry, is this supposed to be a contradiction of my statement?

You appear to have taken much longer to say the same thing.

[NNadir]

7. What I saw - and I'm pretty sure my reading comprehension skills are far better than some I see - is a typical...

Last edited Thu Jun 18, 2026, 08:54 AM - Edit history (1)

...antinuke remark about efficiency, placing clean nuclear energy in the same class as coal, coal being the main source of electrical power in China, where we see whooping about electric trucks. In China, electric anything remains at this point in time, dirty.

In general, antinukes love to lump reliable forms of energy together. There are actually only 4 and a half major dispatchable forms of electrical power generation; the word "dispatchable" for people with poor reading comprehension skills means "available on demand."

They are, coal, gas, oil, and nuclear for the "four" and "hydroelectricity" for the half. Hydroelectricity in many places, Norway for instance, is dispatchable, but it appears from the American West, the destroyed Glen Canyon dam that created the "Lake" Powell and the Hoover dam that created "Lake" Mead may end up as unreliable for generating electricity as all the unnecessary solar and wind garbage in California. The problem for Lake Powell and the Hoover dams is that the 5.689 trillion dollars squandered on so called "renewable energy" between 2015 and 2025 has been completely and totally useless at addressing the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. Hence major droughts. I therefore will give a "half" for hydroelectricity as dispatchable form of energy, a crude, admittedly, approximation. It's clearly facing problems with reliability. The disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers will probably do the same in time for Three Gorges.

I am well aware of thermodynamics, in particular the thermal efficiency of powerplants. By contrast, it's pretty clear that anyone prattling insipidly about batteries and hydrogen on a burning planet doesn't know shit from Shinola about thermodynamics. This is obviated every time they prattle on about batteries and hydrogen.

Of the four thermal reliable forms of energy, the three fossil fuels about which antinukes couldn't care less, and nuclear energy, only one is clean and sustainable. That's nuclear fission.

Antinukes have been lumping the clean and sustainable form of energy, nuclear, with the types about which they couldn't care less, oil, coal, and gas, for decades. When they are in denial of doing so, as an advocate of environmental sustainability I am inclined to call them out on their clear disingenuous - or to put it more firmly, dishonest - practice of lumping nuclear energy, to which they object, killing people, with fossil fuels.

Of course there are "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke types around here too. They claim that the world will be saved by fusion energy, about which they know next to zero, just as they know next to zero about thermodynamics and nuclear fission energy.

Thinking fusion is sustainable and fission is not sustainable is absurd, given that no one has ever generated electrical power from fusion, and it still is not clear that anyone ever will. Meanwhile, while we wait for fusion just as we all wait for the "renewable energy"/hydrogen/battery nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, the planet is burning.

I would ask members of this class of "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes, the "fusion will save us" types if I thought them remotely cognizant of reality, if they know if the world supply of isolated tritium - produced in Canada's fission reactors - has reached 100 kg yet, but I'm not sure they'd understand the implications. Their knowledge of basic physics is appallingly bad in my opinion.