The European Medium & Heavy Truck market has been cruising with booming order intake, freight volumes & rates and robust fleet utilization levels while facing modest headwinds in form of supply chain disruptions & bottlenecks, rising material costs & semi-conductor chip shortages.
The European Medium & Heavy Truck market has been recovering steadily from the COVID-19 outbreak with booming order intake, freight volumes & rates and robust fleet utilization levels across operators which have reached pre-COVID-19 levels while facing modest headwinds in form of continued challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic marked by supply chain disruptions & bottlenecks, labor shortages, rising material costs, limited freight capacity & semi-conductor chip shortages which continue to impede the pace of overall recovery momentum.
The industry continues to make steady progress towards development of a range of sustainable technologies geared towards de-carbonization of transportation over long term, which remains the top priority, while continuing the development of innovative services & business models configured on connectivity & autonomy.
The efforts have primarily been led by electrification, focused on both battery electric & hybrid technologies, with the tipping point for electric trucks coming in 2022 with mass production & commercial deliveries of electric trucks commencing across industry OEMs. Additionally, mass market production, introduction & adoption of hydrogen powered trucks, featuring hydrogen fuel cell based propulsion systems is likely in the 2030s.
Further, the outlining of H2Accelerate program by the industry to accelerate the uptake of green hydrogen and initiatives like, First Movers Coalition, geared towards jumpstarting the scalability of sustainable technologies through the end of current decade, are likely to further accelerate the imminent energy transition to sustainable propulsion systems & technologies going forward.
The rapid energy transition towards de-carbonization & sustainability, continued infrastructure investments, especially, the launch of EU’s major Infrastructure Investment under its Global Gateway Strategy in late 2021 aimed at mobilizing & investing EUR 300 billion through 2027 towards development of global infrastructure across five key sectors, with EUR 135 billion to be dedicated to infrastructure investments by the European Fund for Sustainable Development+ by 2027, strong demand from the commodities segment apart from the ongoing e-commerce boom are likely to collectively provide significant growth opportunities to the industry over near to medium term in form of fleet replacements, expansion & recapitalizations, especially, in a volatile crude oil price environment.
That’s despite projections for the slowdown of global economic recovery over near term owing to uncertainty over the likely direction of the pandemic and rising inflation levels necessitating monetary policy tightening by the Central Banks. Overall, Trucking in Europe is projected to maintain its cruising speed as well as overall growth momentum in 2022.
