Impacts of electric and driverless heavy-duty trucks on the future decarbonized freight transport system: Analyzing techno-economic uncertainty using exploratory modeling and analysis

Predicting the impacts of a transition to a decarbonized freight transport system is challenging due to the inherent uncertainty surrounding the development and deployment of electric and automated truck technologies. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of techno-economic uncertainties for the deployment of electric trucks and automated driving technology and their impacts on the Swedish freight transport system by 2045. A modified version of the Swedish national freight model, Samgods, extended to represent manual electric trucks (METs) and automated driverless electric trucks (AETs), is used to analyze over 300 scenarios. In these scenarios, assumptions about the development and performance of METs and AETs are varied relative to the Swedish reference forecast for freight transport. System-level impacts including mode splits, logistics costs, and energy demand are analyzed. Higher levels of electric truck technology maturity correlate with reduced transport costs, increased road freight demand, and decreased reliance on biofuels. AETs further amplify these effects although with significant variation by operating model and technology maturity. Even without full SAE Level 5 automation, AETs operating exclusively on highways could, in some scenarios, perform over 75 % of domestic road transport tonne-kilometers, provided their unit economics are favorable. In addition to contributing by exploring a plausible outcome space of electrification and automated driving technology, this paper demonstrates a tractable approach for exploring system-level impacts of MET and AET deployment on logistics, mode shifts, and energy consumption with national-level freight models under uncertainty.