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By Nick Carey
DETROIT, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk put electric heavy commercial trucks on the map in November 2017 when he unveiled the company's futuristic, battery-powered Semi, booked hundreds of orders and said he would start delivering the vehicles by 2019.
Now, it looks like 2020 could be the big year for electric big rigs. Incumbent truck makers are accelerating their electric truck projects toward launches that year, while Musk told investors in June production of the eye-catching Semi freight hauler should begin "basically (in the) first half of 2020" instead of 2019.
Driven by regulatory pressure to cut diesel pollution, commercial truck makers have made a flurry of fresh announcements to deliver battery electric or hydrogen-fueled vehicles. They have landed orders from big fleet operators such as Walmart Inc, United Parcel Service Inc and Anheuser Busch Inbev NV.
The challenge is gauging how big the market for electric commercial trucks will be, especially outside of China.
The limited range of most first-generation electric or hydrogen commercial trucks and a lack of charging infrastructure threaten to limit sales to short-haul operations.
In China, regulators are considering a long-term plan to replace 1 million diesel big rigs with cleaner trucks, including electric models, and some Chinese ports and cities are banning diesel trucks, which could significantly boost sales.
In the United States, the outlook for electric truck demand is cloudier. Some analysts estimate that by the mid-2020s, U.S. annual electric truck sales may number only in the hundreds. Over the last 12 months, North American diesel and so-called semitruck orders totaled 497,000 units.
Toyota Motor Corp's experience at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach illustrates the potential, and the problems for clean truck technology.
The first of Toyota’s working hydrogen fuel-cell trucks was designed with a 200-mile (322 km) range for daily operations and has already logged more than 10,000 miles running short routes around the ports.
The newer second iteration has a 300-mile range but that is still well short of the 1,000 miles or more diesel trucks can run between refueling stops.
Toyota has not provided a production timeline, but executive program manager Chris Rovik said “so far we feel confident the technology is absolutely applicable to this type of use case.”
"CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM"
Fueling infrastructure is a major headache for electric and hydrogen trucks.
Hyundai Motor Co commercial vehicle director Mark Freymueller describes a chicken-and-egg problem: Trucking companies are reluctant to buy trucks without fueling stations, but fuel station operators will not install them without trucking customers.