BloombergNEF counts 158,000 medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks sold in the first half of 2026, up 75 percent

Global sales of medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks reached a record 158,000 vehicles in the first half of 2026, up 75 percent from a year earlier, and practically all of them were battery-electric, BloombergNEF wrote on 29 September 2026. The same 158,000, and the same 75 percent, appear as the lead callout in the 2026 Commercial ZEV Factbook, dated 17 September 2026 on its cover and titled "Zero-Emission Commercial Vehicles: Building Momentum." The factbook says it was produced by BloombergNEF with the Smart Freight Centre, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and Traton. The Smart Freight Centre page announcing that factbook is dated 21 September 2026 and describes the same partnership. That news page does not itself print the 158,000. The copy of the factbook this desk opened is the PDF at the address above.

The factbook uses two phrasings for the half-year total. The callout, under the heading for global sales of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty trucks, prints 158,000 electric trucks in the first half, up 75 percent year on year. A later section says global low- and zero-emission truck sales reached almost 158,000 units in the first half, up 75 percent from a year earlier and more than eight times the first-half 2023 level. BloombergNEF's 29 September article uses the record of 158,000 and does not print the "almost" wording or the comparison with 2023.

China holds most of that volume. The factbook says China accounted for more than nine in 10 vehicles sold, with volumes up 78 percent to nearly 145,000. Europe rose 50 percent to more than 11,200. The United States fell 63 percent to a few hundred. Everywhere else tripled to almost 1,400 and stayed below 1 percent of the global market. BloombergNEF's article says more than nine in 10 electric trucks sold in the half were in China, and that growth there has pushed electric trucks to about 20 percent of truck sales. It says electric trucks were 5.5 percent of Europe's truck sales in the half, that shares were higher still in Norway and Switzerland without printing those two shares, and that Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden each exceeded 10 percent. It calls the U.S. battery-electric truck market a near standstill. That phrase and the factbook's "a few hundred" point the same way. They are separate sentences.

Battery-electric trucks are the product inside that total. The factbook says fully electric volumes rose 79 percent to almost 157,000 units in the first half, more than 99 percent of clean-truck sales. Plug-in hybrids were about 720 units, down 56 percent. Fuel-cell trucks are described twice, and the two sentences are not identical. In the fuel-mix section, fuel-cell sales declined 55 percent, to just over 500 units, or 0.3 percent of the market, and plug-in hybrids still outsold them. In the fuel-cell section, global fuel-cell truck sales fell 55 percent to around 530 units, about 95 percent of them in China, which the factbook puts at 507 units. Sales in the United States and Europe were fewer than two dozen units. This story keeps both wordings: just over 500, and around 530 with 507 in China. It does not replace either with a single exact count the factbook does not print.

The factbook's full-year line is a likelihood: medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks are likely to exceed 9 percent of global truck sales in 2026. BloombergNEF's 29 September article does not print that line. Nine percent is separate from Europe's 5.5 percent first-half share and from the about 20 percent the article gives China. In this factbook, zero-emission trucks are battery-electric and fuel-cell trucks. Plug-in hybrids sit outside that definition even though BloombergNEF counts them as electric vehicles more broadly. The 158,000 callout, the almost 157,000 battery-electric line, the about 720 plug-in hybrids, and the around 530 fuel-cell trucks are separate lines. This desk has not summed them.

Charging is the constraint next to the sales. The factbook says European electric tractors can drive 500 to 600 kilometers and that megawatt charging is starting to be deployed. As of June 2026, less than 2.5 percent of truck stops were within one kilometer of a dedicated truck charger of at least 350 kilowatts, and another 9 percent were within one kilometer of high-power charging shared with cars, using a truck-stop set from Fraunhofer and Amazon. BloombergNEF says EU targets under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation are speeding construction, and that recovering a megawatt station's investment would take roughly $0.10 to $0.22 per kilowatt-hour on top of electricity. That range is a cost-recovery estimate in the article, not a posted charger price.

The factbook prints a representative residual-value range after three to five years of 0 to 20 percent. BloombergNEF says financiers it interviewed are underwriting more deals against contracted haul because residuals vary with battery condition. That is a description of practice, not a valuation and not financing advice. A separate India line, nearly 18,700 battery-electric commercial vehicles so far this year, mostly light-duty, stays out of the 158,000. The factbook already excludes European delivery vans from the truck series.

Analysis

The 75 percent figure is global. The factbook says more than nine-tenths of the trucks were sold in China, Europe's volume rose 50 percent to more than 11,200, and U.S. volume fell 63 percent to a few hundred. "Likely to exceed 9 percent" is the factbook's full-year 2026 line. The September article does not repeat it. Fuel-cell sales are the remainder: around 530 in one section, just over 500 in another, with 507 of the around-530 count placed in China.