What ACEA is asking for
The association says the revision should deliver on the objective it was proposed with: removing operational barriers to zero-emission road freight. In practice that means a higher permissible gross weight for vehicles whose drivetrain is electric or hydrogen, so the extra mass of the energy storage does not come out of the cargo.
The directive (96/53/EC) sets the international ceiling at 40 tonnes and 16.50 m for a five-axle articulated combination, while 18.75 m applies to a road train (a motor vehicle plus trailer). Several member states already allow more nationally, which is why a truck can run at 50 tonnes inside the Netherlands and then have to be re-plated at the German border. ACEA's members have argued for years that cross-border operation of heavier combinations should be harmonised rather than left to bilateral permits.
ACEA's full position is published on its site. The timing is not accidental. The CO2 regulation for heavy vehicles requires a 45 % cut in fleet emissions from 2030, and a haulier who loses three tonnes of payload has a straightforward reason not to order the electric version.
Where the four tonnes come from
Take the Mercedes-Benz eActros 600, the long-haul tractor most fleets will benchmark first. It carries 621 kWh of LFP cells in three packs. Mercedes-Benz does not publish the pack weight, so the number below is our own estimate: LFP chemistry in a truck application lands at about 6 kg per kWh at pack level once modules, housing, cooling and the high-voltage harness are counted. That gives 621 × 6 ≈ 3.7 tonnes.
The four-tonne figure itself is not ACEA's invention. The current two-tonne zero-emission allowance is what the European Commission's July 2023 revision proposal would raise to four tonnes, and ACEA's 29 October statement is asking the Council and Parliament to preserve such an allowance in the final deal. A diesel drivetrain with engine, gearbox, tanks and 400 litres of fuel does not weigh nothing either, so the real payload difference is smaller than 3.7 tonnes, but the order of magnitude is clear. At our 6 kg/kWh estimate, four tonnes covers the pack with a few hundred kilograms of margin.
That margin is thin, and it depends entirely on the pack figure. At a more conservative 7 kg/kWh — a plausible value once a heavier housing and more cooling are counted — the same 621 kWh comes to about 4.3 tonnes, which is already more than the four-tonne allowance. In other words, a one-kilogram-per-kWh shift in pack efficiency is enough to decide whether the allowance covers the battery or leaves part of it in the payload.
Axle loads are a separate matter. Gross weight can rise without any single axle being allowed to carry more, so the allowance has to be spread across the combination in the same way as today. On a 6x2 tractor with a 621 kWh pack the drive axle is the one that has to be watched.
Cost per 100 km, electric versus diesel
Our charging cost calculator works on any consumption figure, trucks included. With a loaded 40-tonne combination at 1.2 kWh/km (the eActros 600's 500 km claimed range from 621 kWh implies about 1.24), 100 km takes 120 kWh.
At a public megawatt charger priced at €0.39/kWh, that is €46.80 per 100 km. At a depot tariff of €0.18/kWh it drops to €21.60. A diesel artic burning 30 l/100 km at €1.45/l costs €43.50.
The result is uncomfortable for anyone selling charging as the cheap option. On public DC power, an electric truck is slightly more expensive per kilometre than diesel. The saving exists, but it lives in the depot, on a contracted tariff, overnight. That is where fleet economics are decided, and it is why the grid connection at the yard matters more than the charger on the motorway.
On CO2 the gap does not depend on tariffs. At the EU average of roughly 0.21 kg CO2/kWh, 120 kWh emits about 25 kg per 100 km. Diesel at 30 l/100 km emits about 79 kg. Over 100,000 km a year the difference is around 54 tonnes.
The depot power problem
A truck doing 500 km a day needs roughly 600 kWh back overnight. Spread over six hours that is 100 kW per vehicle; over eight hours, 75 kW. Ten trucks on one yard means a megawatt of connection capacity, which many depots do not have and cannot get quickly.
Buffer batteries are the workaround, and the model is already being built at charging parks: Ionity is installing battery storage at 50 of its parks, more than 20 MWh in total by 2027. The same arithmetic applies to a logistics yard, just with a lower power rating and a longer dwell time. Our supercharger database of 483 locations covers cars; for trucks, the depot is the network.
Weight is not only a truck question
Every heavy vehicle with a large pack runs into the same trade-off between range, mass and payload. It shows up in our look at the Entegra Embark camper and its 140 kWh pack, where the battery is a small fraction of the gross weight, and it dominates a 40-tonne tractor where the same pack is multiplied by four.
For a fleet the decision tree is short. Check the axle loads on the actual routes before ordering. Model the depot tariff rather than the public one, using the savings calculator with your own kWh price. And if the business case depends on running at 44 tonnes with a full trailer, the weight allowance is not a detail, it is the order.
ACEA's statement calls the revision ongoing and asks for a deal, which means that as of 29 October 2026 no final agreement between the Council and the European Parliament had been announced. Until a deal is announced, the 40-tonne ceiling with its existing two-tonne zero-emission allowance, plus the 16.50 m limit for articulated combinations and the national exceptions, remain in force.