Let’s Talk About Workhorse Electric Trucks

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The Tesla Semi and Cybertruck have been sucking up much of the media attention around electric trucks in recent years. Meanhile, the US auto maker Workhorse has quietly logged more than 20 million miles on its less showy but highly functional zero emission vehicles, including vans, shuttles, buses, box trucks, and refrigerated trucks, among others. Wait, who are these people?

20 Million Miles For Workaday Electric Trucks

Workhorse surfaced on the CleanTechnica radar back in 2017, when it introduced its W-15 electric pickup truck with a range extender. “The company claims it has 1,000 orders for the W-15 electric truck from such companies as Clean Fuels Ohio, Duke Energy, Portland General Electric, the City of Orlando, and the Southern California Public Power Authority,” observed CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley.

Since then, Workhorse has been patiently manufacturing and selling pickups and other medium-duty electric vehicles at its factory in Union City, Indiana. The batches have been small but the numbers add up, leading to the 20 million mile mark announced last week.

“This achievement reinforces the view that medium-duty is the sweet spot for electrification,” notes Workhorse CEO Scott Griffith.

In last week’s update, the company also lists Purolator, Vestis (formerly Aramark Uniform Services), Cintas, several FedEx independent service providers, and other leading fleets among those with Workhorse EVs on their roster.

The Long Road To Scale-Up

Workhorse has been treading lightly so far, which helps explain why it has been flying under the media radar. The initial plan was to ratchet the Union City operation to a pace of 60,000 units a year. That goal is still some distance away. In a press statement last week, Workhorse noted that it has more than 1,100 medium-duty electric vehicles of various sorts on the road today.

The company has been collecting and analysing the 20 million miles logged by those EVs, providing it with a fact based platform for further scale-up. “This deep real-world experience enables Workhorse to be a true partner in fleet electrification to its customers today, and at the same time drives the design and engineering of the company’s 7th generation platform and expanded vehicle lineup,” Workhorse explains.

The company’s cites “meaningful returns in total cost of ownership” at the top of its focus areas along with high uptime, holistic design from the ground up, batteries optimized for fleet applications, and depot-based EV charging infrastructure among other items.

Next Steps For Electric Trucks

The 7th generation platform refers to the company’s new Gen 7 EV, which Workhorse describes as “a truly software-defined vehicle whose modular/building-block approach features a common set of scalable, interchangeable sub-systems.”

In addition to allowing for an endless array of configurations, the new platform also enables vehicle owners to add upgrades as new technology comes on the market, including autonomous driving features.

“As we design and engineer our next generation, our plan is to move the industry from an era of unconnected, static hardware assets to always-on, smart nodes in an intelligent network,” Griffith adds.

“This system will enable Workhorse to rapidly create new vehicle configurations without expanding engineering complexity,” the company elaborates, noting that its modular, standardized business model adds another notch to the TCO (total cost of ownership) edge over gasoline and diesel trucks.

Electric Trucks Save Many, Many More Bucks

Ultimately, Workhorse aims to bring the up-front price of its electric trucks down to parity with gasoline and diesel, too. Even without up-front parity, though, the TCO case for electric trucks has suddenly become become more attractive than it was just two weeks ago, when US President Donald Trump launched the country into a full-on war against Iran, touching off a regional conflict impacting global energy markets.

Aside from direct savings on fuel costs, Workhorse’s focus on depot-based charging provides fleet managers with opportunities to extend the savings into grid management programs that reward electricity ratepayers for off-peak use.

For some insights regarding next steps, take a look at Workhorse’s recent merger with the California firm Motiv Electric Trucks. Motiv was a regular visitor to the pages of CleanTechnica up to about three years ago, so now is a good time to play catch-up.

The merger, announced as complete on December 15, puts both companies under the Workhorse umbrella. “With the completion of the transaction, Workhorse has scalable manufacturing capabilities, advanced and road-tested products, and a robust go-to-market approach which includes successfully developing commercial relationships with 10 of the largest commercial truck fleets in North America,” Workhorse noted.

The transaction also provided the newly expanded company with a financial leg up, in the form of a $10 million revolving credit facility and $40 million earmarked for supply chain  costs.

“In addition to materially reducing time from order-to-delivery, these financings are expected to provide significant liquidity to fund growth,” Workhorse explained.

A Perfect Time For Electric Trucks

That growth spurt is perfectly timed for the spurt in fuel prices sparked by Trump’s war. It’s too bad that other EV stakeholders in the US downscaled their near-term electrification plans just a few months ago. Now they’ll have to scramble to catch up.

On its part, Workhorse has already ramped the capacity of its Union City factory to 5,200 units annually, so stay tuned for more news from those quarters.

Turning attention now to the Tesla Semi, the Class 8 electric truck Tesla CEO Elon Musk began pitching almost 10 years ago. After a long series of delays, the truck is in production but customer orders indicate that pilot tests are still ongoing.

To be fair, the Class 8 heavy-duty electric truck category is a tough nut to crack, compared to medium-duty trucks. However, Musk didn’t make things easier by delaying the Semi year after year. Now Mack Trucks and other legacy truck makers have muscled their own Class 8 electric trucks into the market, giving Tesla a run for the money.

As for medium-duty trucks, Tesla’s lone attempt at the category is Musk’s Cybertruck vanity project, which has become widely recognized as an Edsel-worthy flop. Besides, if Musk decides take another stab at the medium-duty market, Tesla is a day late and a dollar short. Workhorse is just one example in an increasingly crowded field that includes legacy truck and bus makers as well as startups.

Image: The US startup Workhorse has launched its new Gen 7 electric truck platform, providing fleet owners with a software-forward pathway to total-cost-of-ownership savings over conventional vehicles (cropped, courtesy of Workhorse via globalnewswire.com).