Zero-Emission Dealer Says Washington Is Electrifying the Wrong Trucks

Class 4, 5 and 6 trucks — not Class 8 semis — are the zero-emission vehicles ready to deploy at scale today, according to Johannes Ariens, CEO of dealer group Range Zero Emissions. He thinks the industry's cleanup push is aimed too high, with incentive programs fixated on heavy tractors while 91.5% of the nearly 580,000 active U.S. motor carriers run 10 or fewer trucks, according to American Trucking Associations data drawn from U.S. DOT figures as of June 2025.

Range Zero Emissions sells only zero-emission commercial vehicles, from Zero Motorcycles up to Class 8 trucks, and has no connection to Range Energy, the electric-trailer company sharing its name. In August the group became an authorized dealer for Hyundai's XCIENT Fuel Cell hydrogen Class 8 truck, with Washington state as its primary territory. It also folded Ziegler Truck Group's zero-emissions business into the Range brand and bought the West Coast operations of Ethero Truck & Energy — deals that moved the company from a single Pacific Northwest location into the Midwest and California, Ariens told FreightWaves.

Why medium-duty first?

Most commercial truck users run medium-duty vehicles, and many can charge on power a small business already has. "Charging two vehicles on Level 2 is like, do you have a washing machine and an air compressor at your house?" Ariens said. "You're good to go if you're driving less than 150 miles a day."

He frames electrification as a natural progression — from e-bikes and the Chevy Volt to Rivians and the Hummer EV — where each step built charging the next one could use. "We are so focused on Class 7 and 8 that we're trying to jump a very natural progression of electrification," he said. "You cannot charge a Class 8 semi on a Level 2. It literally won't do it."

Class 8 charging infrastructure remains early. Tesla formally opened its Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada, on Sept. 24 and expects more than 30 Megawatt Charging System stations by year-end. "It's years until that's proliferated, and until all the legacies jump in," Ariens said.

Medium-duty already has anchor buyers: FedEx, Rivian and Amazon. In September, FedEx ordered 2,000 all-electric trucks from Harbinger, one of the brands on Range's roster. Ariens wants voucher dollars steered toward small fleets: "We should increase the voucher amounts for Class 4, 5 and 6," he said. "Just get all these small businesses with five trucks or less into their EVs."

Which incentive programs refill?

Federal support is pulling back, Ariens said, while California and Washington run "the most significant medium- and heavy-duty commercial incentive programs in history." California's HVIP program has delivered more than $1 billion since its 2009 launch. In May the state added the California Clean Fuel Reward, with $250 million available this year and more than $1 billion expected through 2030, funded by the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Washington launched its Zero-Emission Incentive Program on April 29 with $112 million in vouchers from the state's Climate Commitment Act.

"These are continuous, recycled funding streams, usually coming from carbon tax credits, designed to refill," Ariens said. "They're not one-shot programs." That matters because fleets replace trucks on five- to seven-year cycles. Once a technology reaches 5% of new adoption, it tends to stick — which, he said, is exactly what the programs are designed to achieve: "help get from zero to 5, which is very hard."

Where does hydrogen fit in Class 8?

Ariens rejects the battery-versus-hydrogen debate as binary thinking: "I think the future of Class 8 is absolutely both." Battery-electric suits drayage, where trucks need less range; the trade-off is weight, with federal law allowing battery-electric power units a 2,000-pound allowance, up to 82,000 pounds gross — and every added pound is a pound of freight not hauled.

Hydrogen is also starting at ports, which offer consistent daily routes from a single fueling point. Shell built a heavy-duty station at the Port of Long Beach, and HTEC opened a Class 7-8 fuel-cell station at the port terminal in Delta, British Columbia, in June. The 30-truck NorCAL ZERO project has run XCIENTs in Oakland drayage since May 2024. "Those trucks were going by all day, in and out. No big deal," Ariens said of a September Port of Oakland event. "Then those trucks are going 300, 400 miles."

The XCIENT has moved east: Hyundai's Metaplant near Savannah, Georgia, began running 21 of the trucks in December 2024, and a Rutgers-led Port Newark pilot planned to test six starting in early 2026, according to Transport Topics.

Still, Ariens keeps returning to the smaller end of the fleet: "Why are we not making it as easy as possible to go to Class 4, 5 and 6, and then Class 7 and 8 will solve its own problem?" With state voucher programs refilling on their own cycles and Class 8 charging still years from proliferation, the medium-duty segment looks set to carry the near-term volume of U.S. truck electrification.