Media Contact

Rachel Huggins, Catalyst Mobility (rhuggins@calstart.org)

Meena Bibra, Smart Freight Centre (meena.bibra@smartfreightcentre.org)

[New York City, NY] — Today, Catalyst Mobility™ (formerly CALSTART), a leading clean transportation nonprofit, and the Smart Freight Centre, announced that a coalition of the world’s largest cargo-owning shippers have enabled the largest electric truck order to date in the United States — 2,500 battery-electric Class 8 trucks — a single deal that nearly doubles the U.S. electric Class 8 fleet.

The order is organized through the Zero-Emission Truck Shipper-Carrier Alliance Leading Electrification (ZET SCALE), a program jointly operated by Catalyst Mobility and the Smart Freight Centre. By aggregating freight demand at a scale no single company could reach on its own, ZET SCALE is building a market for electric trucks that did not exist before. The Alliance’s ambition runs to 10,000 trucks and beyond.

Founding shippers in ZET SCALE include Microsoft and PepsiCo, among others, each supporting the initiative through different levels of engagement and demand signaling.

“You can have good technology and still not have a market,” said Catalyst Mobility’s President and CEO, Michael Berube. “What is different about ZET SCALE is that the demand was organized so manufacturers could price at scale. That is how costs move, and that is how clean trucks leave the pilot phase.”

“Microsoft is working to turn our sustainability commitments into operational reality,” said Nico De Golia, Director of Sustainability for Cloud Supply Chain Global Operations at Microsoft. “Our participation in ZET SCALE does that for road freight, by signaling real demand for electric trucks so the low-carbon option becomes competitive for moving our cloud infrastructure.”

“Every part of the freight industry wants cleaner trucks, but until now each company faced that transition — and its risks — alone,” said Christoph Wolff, CEO of the Smart Freight Centre. “ZET SCALE aligns shippers, carriers, manufacturers, and financiers around a single real demand signal. When the risk is shared across the whole chain instead of resting on any one player, the industry can finally move at scale.”

This aggregated shipper demand has reduced electric truck prices through large-scale volume orders. In the Alliance’s independent, competitive request for proposals (RFP), enhanced volumes allowed every truck maker in the running to provide competitive pricing and improve the business case. After evaluating price, range, charging capability, and production capacity, the Alliance selected Tesla as its primary original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for the initial 2,500 trucks. The Alliance also includes Kenworth, RIDE, and Volvo as secondary OEMs that carriers can utilize as additional options that may meet their specific operational needs.

“The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, Director for the Tesla Semi Program. “ZET SCALE’s goals are exciting because they take the operational cost advantage and predictability that electricity provides and amplifies it at scale. We are proud to have been the primary selection in this RFP and look forward to giving shippers and carriers a new competitive edge.”

ZET Financial, a strategic partner to the Alliance, is issuing the purchase order for the initial 2,500 trucks in RFP 1 and will deploy the trucks through its fair market value lease program. ZET Financial’s unique lease structure, “ZET Lease,” eliminates the residual-value risk to the fleet operator, a barrier which has kept many carriers and fleets on the sidelines. Beyond financing, ZET Financial brings over 25 years of Class 8 truck leasing, life cycle data analytics, and asset management services to fleets participating in ZET SCALE. ZET Financial works directly with corporate fleets and carriers to integrate them into ZET SCALE by providing an analysis on the true cost of running a truck built around each fleet’s actual data, duty cycle, and operational metrics, as well as advisory services for infrastructure and charging solutions.

“When analyzing the true cost of operating an electric truck, you cannot simply look at individual components on their own,” said Peter Flynn, CEO and Founder of ZET Financial. “Our thorough cost assessment accounts for every major cost driver that affects the truck, including financing, electricity versus diesel fuel, and maintenance.”

ZET SCALE concentrates deployments in high-density freight hubs with the strongest initial routes and economics, driving up utilization of both the trucks and the charging infrastructure they depend on and pulling total cost of ownership down even further. For this first round, the freight hubs will primarily be located in 10 places: Southern California/Los Angeles, Northern California/Stockton, Central California/Bakersfield, Seattle/Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, the Chicago area, Atlanta, and Northern New Jersey/Newark/New York City.

This is only the opening chapter. ZET SCALE’s goal is to scale the model to 10,000 or more electric trucks, creating a blueprint the rest of the freight industry can follow. The Alliance is actively recruiting additional shipper and carrier partners to expand into new regions and unlock the next round of savings for everyone already on board.

About Catalyst Mobility

Catalyst Mobility, formed through the combination of CALSTART and Forth, is a global nonprofit advancing clean, equitable, and affordable transportation for people and goods. We bring together industry, government, and communities to overcome barriers, accelerate innovation, shape policy, and move proven solutions into widespread use — delivering cleaner air, reducing climate pollution, and expanding economic opportunity. Learn more at catalystmobility.org.

About ZET SCALE

ZET SCALE is a private-sector alliance of shippers and carriers pooling freight volume and purchasing power to accelerate the affordable large-scale deployment of Class 8 battery-electric trucks. The initiative is coordinated by the Fleet Electrification Coalition, a joint collaborative of Catalyst Mobility and the Smart Freight Centre.

About the Smart Freight Centre

The Smart Freight Centre is a globally active nonprofit organization for climate action in the freight sector. Their goal is to mobilize the global logistics ecosystem, in particular their members and partners, in tracking and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. The Smart Freight Centre accelerate the reduction of logistics emissions to achieve a zero-emission global logistics sector by 2050 or earlier, consistent with 1.5 degree pathways.