Zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty fleet operation: The perspectives of stakeholders

The transition to zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (ZEMHDVs) offers a valuable opportunity to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and combat climate change. Various countries are implementing policies, incentives, and targets to accelerate the adoption of ZEMHDVs in fleet operations. However, the penetration rate of these vehicles remains low. This study utilizes data from semi-structured interviews with 24 organizations and investigates stakeholders’ perspectives, experiences, and behaviors with respect to ZEMHDV adoption. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model is employed to extract topics that reflect stakeholders’ perspectives. Following that, a qualitative content analysis is conducted to identify barriers and enablers to ZEMHDV adoption. The findings revealed 12 main topics with 68 sub-themes (35 barriers and 33 enablers). Furthermore, five categories of proposed interventions are synthesized, including financial resources and incentives, technological advancement, tailored policies and regulations, planning and operational tools, and data sharing, education, and awareness.