Only 2% of Europe’s new heavy trucks were electric in 2025, while Daimler Truck targets 50% electric sales by 2030 amid charging infrastructure challenges across the region.
Key points
- What The 2% Number Actually Means
- Which European Markets Are Actually Ahead
- Why Daimler Truck Sees Charging As The Real Bottleneck
- Where Daimler Truck Wants To Be By 2030
- Join us for the latest updates on the truck industry
Electric trucks made up only around 2 percent of new heavy truck registrations in the European Union in 2025, according to data published by Daimler Truck itself. The figure is a sobering reality check for an industry that talks constantly about the shift to zero-emission freight and it comes directly from the world's largest commercial vehicle maker, not a critic of the transition.
What The 2% Number Actually Means
Table of Contents
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1. What The 2% Number Actually Means |
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2. Which European Markets Are Actually Ahead |
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3. Why Daimler Truck Sees Charging As The Real Bottleneck |
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4. Where Daimler Truck Wants To Be By 2030 |
According to Daimler Truck, around 5,000 new battery-electric trucks over 16 metric tons were registered across the EU in 2025, representing growth of approximately 51 percent year-on-year. On paper, that kind of growth rate looks genuinely strong. But because the overall truck market is so much larger, that entire volume still only worked out to about 2 percent of total new heavy truck registrations for the year.
That's really the core tension in Europe's electric truck story right now, strong relative growth sitting on top of a still-tiny absolute base. Daimler Truck's own framing of the data highlighted both sides of that coin, describing it as evidence of both the significant need for further action and the substantial potential still sitting untapped in zero-emission commercial vehicles.
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Which European Markets Are Actually Ahead
The 2 percent EU-wide average hides some genuinely significant variation between countries. According to transport policy group Transport & Environment, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are Europe's clear frontrunners, reaching electric truck shares of 16 to 18 percent in 2025, several multiples higher than the bloc-wide average. Germany, meanwhile, leads among the larger truck markets specifically, an important distinction since Germany's sheer market size means its adoption rate carries much more weight in the overall EU average than a smaller Nordic country's higher percentage does.
Notably, Daimler Truck has reportedly overtaken Volvo Group to become the leading electric truck manufacturer in Europe by volume, even as competition intensifies from newer entrants offering competitively priced heavy electric trucks. That combination, a market leader pulling ahead while the overall market share stays low, suggests the current bottleneck isn't really about which trucks are available, it's about broader adoption conditions across the industry as a whole.
Why Daimler Truck Sees Charging As The Real Bottleneck
Daimler Truck's leadership has been consistently vocal about what's actually holding electric truck adoption back and it isn't the vehicles themselves. The company's technology chief has pointed out that the EU's 45 percent carbon emission reduction target for 2030 looks difficult to hit given the current pace of charging infrastructure development, while the company's CEO has separately described the lack of electric truck chargers across Europe and the US as his single biggest concern, citing lengthy permitting processes and the sheer difficulty of installing megawatt-level charging stations capable of powering heavy trucks quickly.
Logistics companies, the actual buyers of these electric trucks, remain reluctant to pay a premium for electric models while charging infrastructure stays incomplete, creating a genuine chicken-and-egg problem, limited charging infrastructure slows fleet adoption, while limited fleet demand slows the business case for building out more charging infrastructure in the first place.
Where Daimler Truck Wants To Be By 2030
Despite the current 2 percent figure, Daimler Truck's own ambitions remain genuinely aggressive. The company is targeting half of its European sales to come from electric trucks by 2030, aiming to sell around 30,000 electric trucks a year in Europe by the end of the decade. The company's Mercedes-Benz eActros 600, its flagship electric heavy truck offering roughly 500 km of range on a charge, has already picked up significant order volume, including a landmark order of more than 200 units from Amazon, one of the largest single electric truck orders placed in Europe to date.
To meet the EU's broader climate targets, industry body ACEA has estimated the installed European fleet of zero-emission trucks needs to expand to around 400,000 by 2030, up from roughly 13,500 at the end of 2024. Getting from where the market stands today to that kind of scale within just a few years remains a genuinely steep climb, one that depends as much on charging infrastructure and policy support as it does on the trucks themselves.
For readers tracking this from India, it's worth noting Daimler Truck's global reach extends well beyond Europe, its Indian arm, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, builds and sells BharatBenz trucks domestically and across export markets. The same electrification lessons Daimler is learning the hard way in Europe, around charging infrastructure being the real bottleneck rather than vehicle technology, are likely to inform how the company approaches electric truck rollout in India and other emerging markets over the coming years.
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Frequently Asked Questions on Commercial Vehicles
Q1. What share of new European trucks were electric in 2025?
Ans. Only about 2% of new heavy trucks (over 16 tonnes) registered in the EU in 2025 were battery-electric, even though roughly 5,000 units were registered, a 51% increase over the previous year.
Q2. Which European countries have the highest electric truck adoption?
Ans. The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark are Europe's frontrunners, reaching electric truck shares of 16-18% in 2025, with Germany leading among the larger truck markets.
Q3. What is Daimler Truck's electric sales target for Europe?
Ans. Daimler Truck is targeting half of its European sales to come from electric trucks by 2030, aiming to sell around 30,000 electric trucks a year in Europe by the end of the decade.
Q4. What is the biggest barrier to faster electric truck adoption in Europe?
Ans. Charging infrastructure remains the biggest bottleneck, with Daimler Truck executives repeatedly flagging slow permitting and limited megawatt-level charging stations as the main reason logistics companies hesitate to switch from diesel.