Why eHGV depots break the van playbook.
Electric trucks work. The money is there. So why did zero emission HGV registrations fall in early 2026? Because the hard problem was never the vehicle. It is the depot, the peak, and the grid connection behind it.
In the first quarter of 2026, registrations of new zero emission HGVs in the UK fell 16.5% year on year, according to SMMT figures: 81 vehicles, against 9,471 new trucks joining UK roads in the quarter, a 0.9% share.
On the face of it, that looks like a technology failing. It is not. Real-world trials keep confirming that battery electric trucks do the job: the ICCT’s analysis of 91 electric tractor-trailers in regional European operation found energy consumption roughly 65% lower than equivalent diesels, with real-world ranges running 11 to 19% above the figures manufacturers advertise.
Nor is it a funding gap. The Zero Emission Truck Grant pays up to £81,000 towards an electric HGV over 26 tonnes, capped at 40% of the vehicle cost. The £170 million Depot Charging Scheme covers 70% of chargepoint and civil engineering costs, up to £1 million per organisation. And the phase-out dates are fixed: new HGVs at or under 26 tonnes must be zero emission by 2035, and every new HGV by 2040.
So if the trucks work and the funding exists, what is holding operators back?
The depot.
One truck is a different kind of load
Start with the batteries. A passenger EV carries 50–100 kWh. An eHGV typically carries 300–600 kWh, and the newest generation goes higher still. That is not an incremental step up from a van fleet. It is a different category of electrical load.
Now run the annual numbers. Real-world data puts consumption for a 40 to 44 tonne artic at roughly 1.0 to 1.2 kWh per kilometre: a study of nineteen battery electric trucks in German regional work averaged 0.96 kWh/km, and Scania’s 38 tonne demonstration run from Sweden to Turkey averaged 1.15 kWh/km over 4,400 kilometres.
Take a truck covering 100,000 km a year at those rates and it pulls 100 to 120 MWh annually through the depot meter. One truck.
A 50 truck depot is moving 5 to 6 GWh a year, the consumption of a small industrial estate, delivered through one site connection.
The peak decides, not the energy
Total energy is only half the story, and it is the less important half. What decides whether an eHGV depot is viable is the peak.
Trucks charge at 150 to 400 kW today, and megawatt charging is arriving: the UK’s first megawatt-scale eHGV charging hub went live at a Kuehne+Nagel site in the East Midlands in January 2026, feeding six charging bays dynamically from a single megawatt-scale power unit. Truck operations also concentrate charging into short windows. Vehicles come back off shift together, plug in together, and need to be ready together.
Ten trucks arriving and charging unmanaged at 150 to 400 kW is an instantaneous demand of 1.5 to 4 MW. Many depots have a few hundred kVA of spare capacity. The gap between those two numbers is the real barrier to electrifying heavy transport, and it does not show up on a vehicle spec sheet.
10 trucks, same kilowatt-hours, different timing. Illustrative modelling of ten eHGVs returning to one depot, not measured site data. Actual peaks depend on charger ratings, battery state on arrival, dwell windows, and departure schedules.
This is why nearly all UK HGV charging today happens at the operator’s own depot, overnight or between routes, and why the depot connection has become the binding constraint. Logistics UK puts a multi-megawatt connection at £100,000 or more and nine to twelve months where the network operator has not been engaged early, and constrained sites run far longer, with reported waits stretching to years. For heavy fleets, the question is no longer “which charger?” It is “how much power can this site actually get, and how do we share it?”
Unmanaged charging is the worst possible answer
Here is the uncomfortable part. The default behaviour, every truck charging at full power the moment it plugs in, is precisely the behaviour that maximises the peak. It books the biggest possible grid connection, pays the highest capacity charges, buys the most expensive hours of energy, and then leaves that capacity idle for most of the day.
The alternative is control. Spread charging across the full dwell window. Charge against each vehicle’s route requirement rather than to 100% by default. Hold the site below its capacity limit. Shift energy into the cheapest hours. Done well, this lets more trucks fit behind an existing connection and defers, sometimes avoids, the grid upgrade.
The network operators have reached the same conclusion. UK Power Networks began a scoping study in March 2026, Future Fleet, to examine how depot, hub and motorway charging will affect local networks, and whether smarter charging, batteries, solar or shared hubs could reduce the need for costly grid upgrades. When the organisation that builds the copper is asking whether software can substitute for it, the direction of travel is clear.
The evidence base is building quickly. The government’s £200 million ZEHID programme is putting up to 370 zero emission HGVs and around 57 charging and refuelling sites into real operation, with systematic monitoring running from 2026. Within it, the eFREIGHT 2030 consortium alone is deploying 100 electric tractor units and 32 megawatt-charging hubs. What these demonstrators are proving is not whether electric trucks work. It is what the energy side of the business case really looks like.
The biggest problem in the depot is also the biggest asset
There is a flip side to all of this, and it is why heavy transport matters so much to TOGL.
A 300–600 kWh battery, plugged in at a depot for long, predictable windows, is the largest controllable energy asset most operators will ever own. Shifting one truck’s charging moves as much energy as shifting several vans. The same characteristics that make an eHGV hard on the grid, the big battery, the high power, the concentrated demand, make it the highest value flexibility asset on the site.
TOGL’s modelled annual value for an eHGV is £15,000–£34,000 per vehicle per year, and £750k–£1.7m a year for a 50-truck depot, across charging cost reduction, peak demand management, capacity planning and, in time, flexibility market participation.
Modelled against unmanaged charging. Around 40% of the modelled value is charging cost savings available through smart charging today; the remainder depends on demand charge reduction (in development) and flexibility revenue (planned). Indicative ranges only, subject to TOGL modelling. Actual value depends on duty cycle, battery size, tariff structure, site constraints, charging windows, integration availability, and flexibility market access.
And to be straight about where we are: TOGL does not support eHGVs today. Depot orchestration for heavy vehicles is in active development for H1 2027, alongside a major truck OEM, a national fuel and energy retailer, and an infrastructure financier, with grid connection assessment developing in parallel. Vehicle data access depends on heavy vehicle OEMs opening their APIs, which is why that is deliberately undated.
“The same characteristics that make an eHGV hard on the grid make it the highest value flexibility asset on the site.”
What operators should do now
Electrification of heavy fleets is not stalling because the trucks fail. It is slowing because operators meet the energy problem later than they should, usually after the vehicles are ordered.
Flip the sequence. Before committing to trucks, understand the site: the existing connection, the substation headroom behind it, and the realistic depot peak under managed rather than unmanaged charging. In many cases the difference between those two peaks is the difference between running on the connection you already have and joining a reinforcement queue. The Depot Charging Scheme’s next funding window is expected in late 2026, and an application is far stronger with that site picture in hand.
That assessment is exactly what TOGL is building for heavy transport, and the vehicle economics can be pressure tested today: the TOGL calculator includes an eHGV mode using published UK tariff and market data, and we can run the same model against your real depot, your tariff, your vehicles, and the hours they are actually plugged in.
Key takeaways
- Zero emission HGV registrations fell 16.5% year on year in Q1 2026 while grant and depot funding reached record levels: the constraint is the depot, not the truck.
- One eHGV can pull 100 to 120 MWh a year, roughly fifty times a typical electric car, and ten trucks charging unmanaged can demand 1.5 to 4 MW at once.
- The depot grid connection is the binding constraint, and the managed peak, not the unmanaged one, is the number a site should be planned around.
- The battery that stresses the connection is also the highest value flexibility asset on the site: TOGL models £15,000–£34,000 modelled annual value per vehicle per year, as an indicative range subject to modelling.
- eHGV support at TOGL is in active development for H1 2027, not live today.
The point
The van playbook assumes the grid can absorb the fleet, and for vans it usually can. Heavy transport starts from the opposite position: the connection is the scarce resource, and how charging is managed decides how many trucks it will carry.
Sources: SMMT new HGV registration data, Q1 2026. ICCT, Real-world use cases for zero-emission trucks, August 2025. Öko-Institut, real-world data analysis of battery electric trucks operating in Germany, 2025. Scania, Södertälje to Istanbul demonstration, 2024. Department for Transport, Zero Emission Truck Grant and Depot Charging Scheme guidance, 2026. UK Power Networks, Future Fleet, 2026. Innovate UK, ZEHID and eFREIGHT 2030 programme data. Logistics UK, electric fleet transition analysis, 2026.
The trucks are ready. The depot is the decision.