How Decade Energy is accelerating Europe's transition from diesel to electric trucks

Ross Douglas recently caught up with Carl-Magnus Norden, who used to be involved with Volta Trucks. Carl-Magnus has moved on to Decade Energy— an electrification partner for logistics operators and depot managers. They discuss the makeup of electrified truck and vans in Europe and how the promise of integrating the grid is part of Decade Energy’s long-term vision.

Ross: You left Volta Trucks to start Decade Energy - how has the market evolved during that transition?

Carl-Magnus: When I started Volta Trucks no one was talking about electric trucks. I remember at the IAA Commercial Vehicles 2018 (the biggest truck fair in Europe) the discussion around electrifying heady duty vehicles was nowhere on the programme. Fast Forward several years to 2022 IAA, all the truck manufacturers had an electric vehicle at the front of their booth.

Volta Trucks helped push the big OEMs in this direction of electrification and we enjoyed great support from customers, with letters of intent of 1000 customers from Forestier, 1500 from David Schenker, etc.

Ross: And what about the electric heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) market generally?

Carl-Magnus: I believe that the prices will go down quite dramatically because it’s not logical that an electric vehicle with the simpler electric drivetrain should be more expensive to produce than a diesel vehicle. With the growing scale of EVs they will get even cheaper. And there is support among the Scandinavian manufacturers, who want this electric transportation revolution to happen now.

Earlier in September 2024, Volvo Group announced a new long-range version of its FH Electric truck, which boasts a range of 600 kilometers. This would have been impossible four or five years ago. And with the cost of batteries continuously dropping, there is no doubt that it will be even cheaper in the future. So if OEMS can produce an electric HDV for a lower cost than a diesel one then of course— why not?

On the demand side, commercial vehicle operators are increasingly submitting orders for vehicles in order to meet their carbon reduction goals. We are in a transitory phase as more sustainability commitments are made, and we need to build the enabling system such that there are no barriers to fleet electrification. For now, the missing link is having the right amount of electricity in the right place.

Ross: What do you mean by the “right place”? 

Carl-Magnus: The depots where vehicles go to offload and reload goods. Thereafter, we need to address the intermediary stops made during long-haul journeys. This is what Decade Energy solves for. 

Ross: Give us a sense of how big an industry you're talking about, how many vehicles, how many depots, what percentage are electric already? 

Carl-Magnus: There are about six-and-a-half million trucks and about 35 million vans. In 2023 not more than 10,000 trucks of those were electric, so less than 1% of the European market. Electric vans, which are more widely adopted, represent about 4%. This translates to a huge potential for growth in the truck market and van market. We see a lot of companies committing to going carbon neutral by 2040 and we see a lot of cities in Europe wanting to ban diesel deliveries from 2030. 

How do we achieve this? What is the timing like of this transition? If you talk to any fleet operator one or two years ago, they said there is no supply of trucks. So the biggest bottleneck so far has been supply. Fortunately, on the truck side the OEMs should start scaling soon, with vehicles hitting the market in 2025 and 2026, which leaders like Volvo already beginning to scale. 

Ross: In terms of the practical considerations of electrification— depot managers used to refuel with a big diesel tank, something they could easily understand. Now they are refuelling with electricity. What are the bottlenecks there? Is it easy to get a new line of power?

Carl-Magnus: Yes, it takes time to increase the capacity, and they will have to consider various options. Photovoltaic (PV) panels is an obvious solution. They have a big parking area, with extensive roofing. This is a good fit for solar energy production. 

But they will need battery storage too and will benefit from the lower PV prices and lower battery prices. Once the costs of this operation and of the vehicles comes down and we reach equilibrium, then why should anybody want to drive a diesel truck anymore? I think it will take 3 or 4 years for Europe to put in the infrastructure to electrify its commercial fleet.

Ross:  What is Decade Energy doing to speed up the transition?

Carl-Magnus: Let’s breakdown the key players in each part of the journey— you EVSE, PV manufacturers, and Battery Storage Energy Systems— and they currently work in vacuums. Of course, the main goal for each player is the integration to the grid. So this is where Decade Energy steps in— we aim to connect each of these dots.

We do that by considering the data flow from the truck to the grid, followed by optimizing the grid for this new demand. However, the first prize is to generate your own energy behind the meter for which the marginal cost is in principle zero. We can help fleet owners consider their options and plan appropriately, with cost and emission reductions being the key aims of the project.  While it’s not our core business, we can also help out in the actual construction or procurement, etc, of the PV equipment and the battery, the EVSE, and so on. The long-term goal for us is to develop a software that will feed all the data flow from these different components I talked about before, and then serve the premium partner for the grid to make it as efficient as possible. 

Ross: How does Decade Energy propose to bring energy costs down and efficiently integrate the logistics network into the electricity infrastructure?

Carl-Magnus: I will answer with an anecdote. I talked to one of the big energy players in Sweden a couple of weeks ago, and he said, “this business— being an energy provider in Sweden— has been a very stable business for many years. We had nuclear as the baseload, and we had hydro-electricity as top-up. So the business attracted people that wanted stability. Then over the last few years, on the supply side, you have all these renewable energy sources (wind and solar) which are inherently variable and then on the demand side you have this EV revolution, creating all sorts of uncertainty around demand.”

Which means that this is a time of disruption and innovation for the industry. We see in the long run that vehicle-to-grid, especially with big batteries in trucks could become important. To encourage this innovation, we need adjustments from the regulator side. For Decade Energy, we aim to be the best friend of the grid suppliers. We can help to stabilize the grid, and we might even be able to help them with battery storage capacity; facilitated by data and by software systems that help balance supply and demand.  

Ross: Who are your clients? Is it depot managers, fleet managers, or is it the grid? Or, in the future, could it be the energy provider? 

Carl-Magnus: We are in the business of systemsd  integration so it is all of the above. For now though there is a focus on the depots, who are in a way most invested given that they own the property. They know that the world is going electric, so it’s a question of investing in this future for the long term. For this you want an experienced partner who can plan accordingly and guarantee savings over that long term. 

Sometimes the trigger for action from these fleet managers is that they ordered 5 e-trucks from Volvo that are coming in 10 months’ time and they don’t have any charging. 

To meet the demand of this transitory phase I mentioned earlier, short-term thinking is no longer optimal. And Decade Energy is positioned for the long-term.