It can be. But is it? Will it be any time soon? Isn't the Tesla Semi the only EV truck on the market and isn't being produced in any major quantities yet? It'll probably be decades before any of those reach your average concrete production site where they're still using trucks from the 90s.
There are many truck manufacturers shipping trucks today. The Teslas that Frito Lay received weren't their first EV trucks, they had been operating EV trucks before they received the Teslas.
This honestly feels like I slipped into a separate timeline when I wasn't watching, last I heard of the topic Nikola was a pump and dump scam, everyone seemed sceptical about battery mass lowering payload to useless levels and range being crap, these things requiring beyond megawatt chargers to get reasonable charging times, you name it. That's somehow all gotten solved in the past few years?! I mean I'm all for it, just seems almost impossible to believe.
I will say, Frito Lay is probably a dream match. They've got massive local delivery of extremely low density products. Almost perfectly suited for EV.
I don't imagine all loads are perfectly suited for EV semis, I imagine we'll continue to have a mix of different technologies for a while. Companies will do what makes economic sense.
Even if you buy carbon neutral electricity, increasing the demand for it will end up increasing carbon positive electricity production (in the large scheme of things).
And we'll ignore carbon to manufacture the truck and create and maintain the roads, warehouses, and other transport infrastructure.
Depending on the vehicle and the source energy the break even on manufacturing may only be a couple of years on most emissions. I think most vehicles are on the road for several years. EVs are a lot more energy efficient to operate.
The per-mile CO2 emissions for my EV are definitely less than an equivalent ICE even if it was powered 100% by combined cycle natural gas. But its powered by like 30%+ renewable which have overall lifetime emissions far less than even a CCNG plant. Sure, the EV had higher emissions to be built but it's probably already reached its break-even point.
And that's ignoring the benefits to local air quality. Commercial trucks have absolutely terrible levels of local emissions which are massively reduced. Far better to have the emissions happen at a centralized CCNG plant where they have a good opportunity for scrubbing and being in an overall less impactful area.
