USA – Whenever I speak with people working in the American commercial vehicle industry, they often tell me that Europe is further ahead: there are more electric buses on the road, there are more charging stations, there are greater incentives from governments to purchase electric vehicles, and so on. Notwithstanding the significant differences between North America and Europe – to say nothing of China, by far the world’s largest EV market – we speak as if we are all racing on the same road towards zero emissions and 100% electric vehicle adoption, with nowhere else to go other than backwards. 

Judging from this year’s Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo – held this year at the Anaheim Convention Center in California – people will soon have less and less reason to claim that America is “behind” Europe. I have never been to a livelier and friendlier trade show, nor have I been anywhere that had more electric vehicles under a single roof. The number of exhibitors presenting new driveline technologies was dizzying, and I had time to speak to only a fraction of them; but the show did not feel crushingly large, as the IAA in Hanover does. On the whole, people were enthusiastic and keen to speak with members of the press. This does not give the impression of a nation unwilling to move away from the conventional diesel driveline.