Prioritizing charging infrastructure for MHDVs on Canada’s busiest freight corridor will insulate the supply chain from fuel shocks and save billions, writes Vision Mobility’s James Carter

Today, diesel trucks are the steam trains of 80 years ago: inefficient, expensive to operate, polluting and with a new technology available and ready to unseat their dominance. 

Ontario has an opportunity to parlay its cheap, clean energy advantage into zero-emission transportation that drives taxpayer savings, jobs and industry advantage. 

Plus, it has North America’s busiest motivator to do so: Highway 401.

Canada’s busiest transport corridor

Highway 401 stretches 828 kilometres across Southern Ontario, from the Quebec border in the east to Windsor at the U.S. border to Detroit in the west. It handles around 500,000 vehicles per day, including 11,000 commercial medium- to heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs). Those trucks carry roughly $600 million in freight each day.

It is the busiest and most important transportation corridor in Canada.

Because of this density, the 401’s traffic produces elevated levels of air and noise pollution that impacts the entire region. 

The Atmospheric Fund, a climate agency focusing on the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, estimates that heavy-duty combustion vehicles create an extra health care cost burden on Ontario taxpayers of between $2.7 billion and $6.7 billion annually, a high percentage of which travel on the 401.

However, a solution is at hand: electric trucks. 

There are two things Ontario needs to overcome to achieve successful zero-emission trucking and realize its multi-billion dollar (more on that later) economic benefits: charging infrastructure and political will.

The charging infrastructure

Before electric trucks can become widespread Ontario needs a combination of Level 2, DC fast charging and megawatt fast charging infrastructure to support a wide variety of commercial ZEVs.  

Will such a charging network be expensive? Absolutely. But a full truck charging network could pay for itself in a short time.

Now we need to look to provincial leadership.

The political will

If elected officials could resist the urge to think in terms of office and, instead, plan generationally, Ontario’s EV charging landscape could really get somewhere.

To make or save tens of billions of dollars annually, there’s going to be a cost to invest. With EV charging, the province must look towards the long-term benefits that it enables, which is no different to roads, bridges, police stations or any other capital heavy infrastructure program.

Fuel price volatility

When translating this to Ontario’s total freight and logistics industry, previous estimates before the recent global fuel shocks pegged cost savings of switching to electric trucks between $3 billion and $6 billion annually.

Today, with rocketing fuel prices, it may be more like a 15 per cent to 30 per cent saving.

Given 60 per cent or more of the total cost of ownership (TCO) for combustion trucks is fuel costs, a price shock of 30 per cent to 40 per cent, like what is occurring now, can bankrupt logistics operators.

In 2024, between $4.8 and $5.4 billion worth of diesel fuel was imported into the province, mostly from the U.S., according to Statistics Canada, based on a price of $1.60 per litre. 

With today’s prices of around $2.20/L, imported fuel could cost as much as $8 billion annually.

Savings add up

From conservative estimates, the latest electric Class 8 trucks can achieve TCO savings of 10 per cent to 20 per cent over their lifetime compared with a diesel truck.

They can charge from five to 70 per cent in under 30 minutes, with adequate equipment. They can get up to 800 km of range, which is more than enough to do Toronto to Montreal or Toronto to Detroit. 

With Ontario’s industrial electricity rates, the cost of charging would be under 10 cents/kWh. When a fully laden Class 8 truck uses just over one kWh per kilometre, the savings add up rapidly.

Dollars and common sense

All told, by aggressively moving towards electric trucks, Ontario could potentially save taxpayers and truck operators north of $12 billion annually in health, fuel and operational costs.  

This is an unprecedented saving, one which activates structural economic advantages that will attract future industry and commercial investment.  

Adopting electric trucks would lift up all of Ontario’s manufacturing sector, as well as making groceries and other goods less expensive for consumers with lower freight costs.

Strategic designation

Both the federal and provincial governments must declare the 401 (along with Quebec Highways 20 and 40) a strategic electric heavy-duty transportation corridor complete with plentiful, reliable fast charging. 

Doing this highlights the 401’s economic importance and focuses federal, provincial and municipal governments on tackling the challenge head on. 

These governments must work together to contribute funding towards truck charging infrastructure, both for depots and for highway megawatt-level fast charging. It should be done on a step-by-step basis, with infrastructure pulling electric truck demand, not the other way around — a proven strategy for EV adoption.  

It’s a once-in-a-century opportunity to move forward quickly, and the time to move is now.