After visiting the China Commercial Vehicle Show in Wuhan, Gianenrico Griffini, President of the International Truck of the Year Jury and Editor of Allestimenti & Trasporti, explains how the China is embracing low emission trucks.

China is a hi-tech country in which, in all business sectors including road transport, long-term trends go hand in hand with rapid and sudden changes, dictated by the opportunities of the moment and the prospects opened up by future scenarios.

This is what we witnessed when visiting the Asian giant’s most important industrial vehicle show, the China Commercial Vehicle Show. There were liquified natural gas-powered trucks and electric vehicles with battery swap systems on display at the show.

Long-term trends, with a time horizon to 2030 and beyond, include the increasing focus of local Chinese transport companies on premium products, electrification, autonomous driving solutions and advanced connectivity-related services.

In the background to these changes is the ongoing consolidation in the road transport sector. Which should lead, according to a McKinsey study published last year, to a shift in demand for trucks from single-vehicle operators or less structured companies, towards medium-sized (with a fleet of more than 20 trucks) or large fleets.

Image: Gianenrico Griffini

The latter could take almost 50 per cent of truck purchasing volumes by 2030, compared to 30 per cent in 2020 and 10 per cent in 2010.

In this changing environment, some European truck manufacturers, for example, Mercedes-Benz and Scania, have decided to locate the production of their latest generation models in China.

This is in order to be able to take advantage, quickly and effectively, of the needs and opportunities offered by the most important truck market in the world in terms of sales volumes.

In fact, it was a market of around 1 million vehicles over 14 tonnes GVM in 2023. These figures are a far cry from the stratospheric peaks reached a few years ago (1.6 million heavy vehicles in 2020 and 1.4 million in 2021), but still record-breaking when compared to the EU registration of some 267,000 trucks and 17,569 in Australia in 2023.

Emerging trends, highlighted by numerous trucks on display at the Wuhan Show, include unconventional powertrains, which go hand in hand with the latest generation ‘China VI’ diesel engines, an emission regulation similar (but not equal) to Euro 6.

Alternative trucks with LNG (liquefied natural gas) engines and battery-electric vehicles (BEV), equipped with a battery swap system, played a starring role at the show.

Alongside them were a number of fuel cell heavy duty vehicles (FCEVs), for which China aims to develop an extensive infrastructure network for the distribution of hydrogen as the energy carrier of the future.