Financing Fleet Electrification:

Battery-Electric Truck Component Resale Highlights Residual Value Upside

Battery-electric trucks (BETs) are a relatively new asset in the vehicle financing sector. The current lack of BET-resale price data results in lenders making the conservative assumption that a BET’s residual value (RV) will fall to nearly zero early in its financing term, making financing unaffordable. To address this problem, CALSTART has developed a new method for benchmarking BETs’ RV: assessing the estimated resale value of BET components.  

CALSTART’s financial model was developed alongside leading industry partners like Zenobē and Connected Energy, who are capitalizing on the $2–$2.5 billion opportunity represented by the used electric-vehicle battery market by 2030. When applied to a typical Class 8 BET, CALSTART’s model shows a strong RV outlook competitive with the RV outlook that lenders make when financing diesel trucks. Specifically, the modeled BET’s components together retain 15–25 percent of the truck’s initial value by Year 5 (compared to 30 percent for a typical diesel truck) and exceed a diesel truck’s RV past Year 8 due to the battery pack’s estimated worth. CALSTART’s method shows that BET lease and financing underwriters should look to second-life applications of BET components and can attribute BETs with higher RV.  

This research was funded by the California Air Resources Board’s Clean Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP).