Comparison of MDHD Vehicles
The 2024 Transportation Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) provides current and future projections of cost and performance for representative medium- and heavy-duty (MDHD) vehicles.
The charts on this comparison page show trajectories through 2050 for:
- Fuel economy, which is reported in miles per gallon gasoline equivalent and represents how efficiently a vehicle converts fuel during operation
- Modeled vehicle price, which represents an estimated cost to the consumer for purchase of a new vehicle, which includes manufacturing costs and profit
- Levelized cost of driving (LCOD), which is an indicator of the cost of operation over lifetime on a per-mile basis and includes vehicle, fuel, and maintenance
- CO2e emissions, which is a metric that incorporates both the fuel emissions and the vehicle fuel economy.
These charts draw from a subset of fuels documented in the Transportation ATB. The full set of data can be downloaded and explored. In addition, each powertrain can be explored.
Estimates are provided for multiple powertrains, including fully commercial and early commercial technologies. Each powertrain has unique features and attributes, and each offers distinct advantages and has distinct limitations.
Factors that influence purchase decisions but are not directly captured in the metrics on this site include the following:
- Type of operation and duty cycle that may make a certain powertrain or fuel type more or less amenable to adoption
- Durability and reliability of a technology and the convenience of maintenance and repairs
- Convenience of fueling (e.g., when and where vehicles can be charged or filled, the time it takes to charge or fill, and the frequency with which a vehicle must be charged or filled)
- Availability of make and models meeting specialty needs or preferences
- Impact of advanced driving features (e.g., autonomous driving capability).
Therefore, use caution in interpreting comparisons. No single metric is sufficient to compare the values of different powertrains for all uses. Not all estimates are developed with the same methods, making comparisons more difficult. Different powertrains are at different stages of commercialization and production volume, which influences cost and performance estimates.
Fuel Economy and Modeled Vehicle Price
The following chart compares fuel economy by powertrain for trajectories over time.
The source of the 2024 Transportation ATB modeled vehicle price and fuel economy is the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) report (Islam et al., 2023), (Wang et al., 2023); the original data are available here. These data are developed using ANL's Autonomie simulation tool.
Select the data to display using the menus above the chart. Use the Metric filter to switch between fuel economy and modeled vehicle price data. Select the vehicle class, powertrain, and other powertrain details using the additional filters.
Levelized Cost of Driving and CO2e Emissions
The following chart compares levelized cost of driving by powertrain for trajectories over time for the selected fuel. Use the filters on the right to change the comparison metric, vehicle, or fuel setting. Click on a scenario name in the legend to change the scenarios displayed.
In these LCOD charts for MDHD vehicles, for both battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), we show LCOD bands that include uncertainty and variation in fuel delivery costs for zero-emission vehicles (MDHD EV charging and hydrogen dispensing). These LCOD bands incorporate scenarios of different utilization, electric power demand charges, equipment costs, charging powers/fueling rates, and business models. In each calculated LCOD for each fuel pathway, the ATB combines these variations on delivery costs with its estimate of bulk energy price (electricity and hydrogen at production gate), for consistency. See the Electricity and Hydrogen pages for additional details of EV charging and hydrogen fueling costs.
These calculations use data from Argonne National Laboratory, which develops and applies the Autonomie simulation tool and R&D GREET model (Wang et al., 2023). Links to data from the ANL report (Islam et al., 2023) on modeled vehicle price and fuel economy are available here.
Select the data to display using the buttons and menus above the chart. Use the Metric filter to switch between LCOD and CO2e emissions data. Select the pathway, scenario, vehicle class, powertrain, and powertrain details using the additional filters. Clicking the black arrows on the top right of the figure shows additional details of the selected fuel pathways. The underlying source for a data point in the chart can be seen by placing your mouse cursor over that data point. The data sources are also cited—with linked references—in the Key Assumptions section next.
Notes:
- The levelized cost of driving includes vehicle, fuel, and maintenance costs only; it does not depict other variables that influence consumer decisions, such as convenience (e.g., fill time, frequency, and location), driving experience and consumer preference, and availability of make and models.
- Changes over time are attributable only to projected modeled vehicle price and performance; the fuel cost and emissions are constant over time.
- No single metric is sufficient to fully compare the values of different powertrains for all uses.
- Emissions references and fuels costs and prices references do not always use the same data source for a given pathway. We recommend caution in interpretation of combined sources of information.
Key Assumptions
The data and estimates presented here are based on the following key assumptions:
- Technology Advances: Technology advances include changes that may reduce costs or may increase costs while improving performance, which implies costs do not always decline between less-advanced and more-advanced scenarios. However, though technology advancements that improve performance may increase vehicle cost, they may also result in a lower LCOD because of potential fuel savings.
- Production Volume: The alternative fuel vehicle markets are less mature than those for internal combustion engine vehicles; therefore, comparisons of the costs of these powertrains are complex. As production increases, greater economies of scale are expected to bring current, low-volume costs closer to the high-volume cost trajectories. With the exception of fuel cell electric vehicles, vehicle components for all powertrains depicted in the ATB are produced at sufficiently high production volume today to achieve costs that reflect economies of scale. Although MDHD plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and BEVs are not currently produced at high volume, we assume learning and scale from light-duty (LD) vehicle manufacturing of electric drivetrain components—which are produced at high volume—lead to at-scale manufacturing costs for MDHD PHEVs and BEVs. However, we note for MDHD PHEVs and BEVs, battery performance, durability, and warranty requirements may imply differences in prices of EV component costs for MDHD EVs and LD EVs. See the powertrain-specific pages for details about ATB's cost trajectory estimates.
- Powertrain Comparisons:
- Modeled Vehicle Price: Relative modeled vehicle prices across powertrains reflect differences in vehicles configuration as well as differences in the level of advancement in components and technologies specific to one or more powertrains (e.g., fuel cells; high-voltage batteries). For example, for some vehicle classes and applications, the ATB shows modeled vehicle prices for BEVs falling below those of internal combustion engine vehicles. In the Base Year, battery costs are sufficiently high that they outweigh the cost savings seen from the absence of an engine, transmission, and other components. However, future battery cost reductions (in addition to motor cost improvements) enable modeled prices for BEVs to fall below internal combustion engine vehicles. Additional details on component level costs for the ATB Moderate and Advanced trajectories can be found in (Islam et al., 2023).
- Levelized Cost of Driving: The Transportation ATB does not include all factors that determine the value of each vehicle technology to each user and for each application. Comparisons of the powertrain technologies presented here should be made with caution because their different attributes offer value across many dimensions with metrics that are not available here. Transportation ATB trajectories cover cost, fuel economy, and emissions, but various other factors influence vehicle adoption. For example, driving range, fueling availability and convenience, and driving experience may all affect a consumer's attitude toward a technology.
- Vehicle Variations: The Transportation ATB presents estimates for representative vehicles in MDHD classes; we do not account for variations in make, model, trim, or body style or for pricing incentives or geographic heterogeneity that influence prices in the market. As a result, representative values shown here may differ from specific models available on the market.
- Fuel Economy Improvements: The assumptions about fuel economy improvements reflect adoption of lightweighting and engine efficiency technologies consistently across vehicle powertrains for a given trajectory.
- Selected Fuel Pathways: The levelized cost of driving and emissions estimates shown here are calculated with three sets of fuels: baseline fuel, lowest cost fuel, and lowest CO2e emissions fuel for each powertrain (see selected fuel pathways). Select Lowest Cost or Lowest Emissions to display those selected fuel pathways, and see the respective Fuels pages for the entire set of fuels data that can be downloaded for exploration.
- Baseline and Lowest Cost Fuel: The baseline fuel and lowest cost fuel are equivalent for gasoline and diesel vehicles. Current market prices for E10 gasoline with starch ethanol and diesel are used for the baseline fuel; future prices are expected to increase with oil prices, and biofuel blends are currently estimated at higher costs—resulting in current market prices to also be the lowest-cost fuel in the current Transportation ATB. For battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the baseline fuel pathway for electricity combines two assumptions to calculate total plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging costs: (1) the national simple average electricity price, using the national grid mix (see the Electricity page), and (2) a charging adder with a range of values that represents the uncertainty in equipment use and charging characteristics across vehicle applications. The lowest-cost fuel price for electricity is only slightly lower than the baseline fuel pathway and corresponds to the future low renewable energy penetration grid mix, which assumes lower natural gas prices. For hydrogen, technology advancements and scale are assumed to reduce hydrogen prices; therefore, the baseline fuel and lowest cost fuel prices are more distinct.
- Frozen Fuel Price Level: The fuel price and emissions of the selected fuel pathways (e.g., Baseline, Lowest Cost, and Lowest Emissions) are associated with a single year. Because we do not provide a time-series trajectory, here we show fuel price at a frozen level for all years so we can offer a range of fuel price values. In the levelized cost of driving and emissions charts, this approach clearly distinguishes effects of fuels from those of vehicle technologies because fuels remain constant whereas vehicle technologies change over time.
- Fuels References: See fuels and blendstock pages for a full description of the fuels references. References for petro- and bio-based diesel include (EIA, 2023a), (EIA, 2024), (DOE, 2023), (Dutta et al., 2021), (Tao et al., 2017), (Tan et al., 2021), (Wang et al., 2023), (Xie et al., 2011), (Xu et al., 2022), and (Zhu et al., 2020). References for electricity include (EIA, 2023b), (EIA, 2023c), (EIA, 2023a), (Gagnon et al., 2024), and (Wang et al., 2023). References for hydrogen include (Bracci et al., 2024), (DOE, 2024a), (DOE, 2024b), (Hubert et al., 2024), and (Wang et al., 2023).
- Taxes: Fuel prices include taxes for all fuels that are currently taxed (e.g., gasoline). We do not include taxes for fuels that are not taxed for transportation today (e.g., electricity and hydrogen).
- LCOD: See the LCOD definition for details about this calculation.
- Well-to-Wheels Emissions: See the well-to-wheels emissions definition for additional discussion on the fuel and vehicle emissions.
Definitions
For detailed definitions, see:
References
The following references are specific to this page; for all references in this ATB, see References.