Belgian Fleet Electrification Business Case

Belgium-specific calibration — what this model assumes

Every default below is set for a transport operator based in Belgium. If the operator is based elsewhere, the diesel refund, home toll rate and subsidy ceilings change and the case must be recalibrated.

• Diesel professional refund €0.1913/L (2026) — Belgium refunds part of the excise on diesel to professional hauliers, so the model always uses the net pump price. This refund is being gradually phased out, which over time strengthens the electric case.
• Belgian diesel toll €0.286/km in Flanders from 1 July 2026 (Viapass / kilometerheffing, incl. the new CO₂ component, up from €0.204) vs €0.038/km for a zero-emission truck at the 2026 80%-discount rate — the largest single driver of the business case. The ZEV rate then follows the post-2029 scenario below.
• Default profile — 100 000 km/yr, researched 6-zone mix. There is no official km-by-country split for Belgian trucks, so the default zone mix (VL 45 / WA 8 / BR 2 / NL 18 / FR 15 / DE 12) is a transparent, editable estimate based on the main Flemish freight corridors. A daily duty in this range is covered on a single overnight depot charge (Windrose R700 Gen-2 ~670 km loaded range, ~500–550 km realistic), so no en-route public charging is assumed and no public-charging premium is added. Cross-border work (Antwerp–Rotterdam, the Ruhr, Lille/Paris) is modelled with the editable zone split in the toll panel; Germany’s full ZEV exemption (€0/km through 30/6/2031) makes cross-border mileage toll-favourable for electric, not unfavourable.
• Post-2029 Belgian ZEV treatment is legally undefined. The EU proposal (COM(2025)348, European Parliament-approved 7/10/2025) would extend a full ZEV toll exemption to 30/6/2031, but it is not yet transposed into Belgian regional law. The default uses the conservative "cliff" (ZEV pays full infrastructure from 2030); the panel lets you switch to "extend to 2031" or "permanent 25% of infra". This is the single largest toll uncertainty in the model.
• Subsidy ceiling up to 70% on charging infrastructure — EU AFIF (up to 50%) stacked with the Flemish Ecologiepremie+ / VLIF; above 70% requires individual state-aid notification. Modeled as received in years 2-4, not upfront.
• Foreign mileage is charged at each zone's own year-indexed rate — set the six-zone split in the parameters, and see the six-zone toll table at the bottom for every figure, its source, and the France/Netherlands/Germany sensitivity note.

Cost of capital / WACC — what it is and how to set it

The short version: your cost of capital is the yearly return you could earn on this money elsewhere at comparable risk — the hurdle the project has to clear. In finance it is also called the discount rate, because it is the rate at which future euros are "discounted" back to today: a euro you only receive in year 7 is worth less than a euro now, and this rate is exactly how much less. (Note: this has nothing to do with a price discount on buying a truck — it is purely about the time-value of money.) Future savings are divided by (1 + rate) for each year of waiting before being added into the NPV.

Why it matters here: it only affects the NPV — the one figure expressed in today's money. NPV discounts every future cashflow back to today at this rate, so a higher rate shrinks far-off savings more and NPV falls; a lower rate raises it. It also feeds the MIRR, which values the yearly savings at this same rate. It does not change the nominal "Total savings" (that is money-of-the-day, undiscounted). The test: if the MIRR exceeds your WACC, or equivalently NPV is positive, the project creates value above this hurdle.

How to set it for a Belgian transport operator:

• WACC (weighted average cost of capital) blends what you pay for debt and the return your equity expects. If most of the fleet is financed by a bank/lease, your WACC leans toward the loan rate.
• Typical 2026 range: 6-9% for a financed asset purchase. A truck lease at ~5-6% interest with modest equity lands near 7-8%. Use a higher figure (10-12%) if you want a stricter test or fund it mostly from equity.
• Rule of thumb: set it to your actual financing rate plus a small buffer. If you simply want to compare against a passive index, set it to that index's expected return (e.g. 7.5% for MSCI World) and a positive NPV then means the fleet beats the index in present-value terms.

Default here is 8.0% — a reasonable mid-point WACC for a financed Belgian heavy-fleet operator in 2026. Adjust the slider to match your own financing.

Charging infrastructure — how it is sized, costed & why these numbers

The key insight: a depot charges overnight, ~22:00–06:00 — an 8-hour window. A regional truck needs only ~420 kWh back, so it draws just ~52 kW averaged over the night; we size to ~65 kW/truck for headroom — a fraction of the truck's 400 kW maximum. Smart software staggers the trucks so the depot's simultaneous peak stays low. That is what makes it affordable: you size the grid and hardware to ~65 kW/truck, not to the nameplate.

One cabinet serves many trucks. The expensive part is the central power cabinet, shared across a row of trucks: a real unit such as the Huawei DS720 (720 kW) runs ~10 trucks at once, or more across the night since they don't all need full power at the same moment. Each truck has its own cheap dispenser, but the costly electronics are pooled — which is why the cost per truck falls steeply with fleet size.

Why this is a depot-only model. The trucks return to base and charge slowly overnight at the depot price (~€0.16–0.26/kWh). Public/fast charging is excluded — it's a separate, occasional, far pricier use case (≈€0.46/kWh, higher losses) that would distort a depot TCO. Megawatt charging (MCS) is also out of scope: it's for en-route top-ups on long-haul routes, with much heavier, costlier grid infrastructure and higher losses at megawatt power. Low-power overnight DC is both the cheapest and the lowest-loss path for return-to-base fleets.

Charging losses — why low power wins twice. Not every kWh reaches the battery: some is lost in AC/DC conversion, the transformer, cabling and standby. It depends on charging power — low-power overnight split DC ≈ 8% (≈5% conversion + 1% transformer + 1% cabling + 1% standby); high-power all-in-one ≈ 11–12% (see table below). This is a recurring cost. Example: 100 trucks, ~500 kWh/night, 300 nights, €0.16/kWh → 8% ≈ €209k/yr wasted vs ≈€327k/yr at 12% — about €120k/yr saved by staying low-power. Low-power overnight DC wins twice: lower CAPEX and lower loss.

What "turnkey" means. The single charging-infra figure in the TCO table is the all-in, ready-to-use price — everything needed to drive a charged truck out in the morning:

• Charging hardware — the power cabinets (the expensive electronics) and the dispensers/satellites at each parking bay.
• Civil works — concrete foundation pads, trenching, underground cabling, bollards and wheel-stops to protect the equipment.
• Grid connection & transformer — the medium-voltage (MV) connection and step-down transformer (see below).
• Engineering & commissioning — design, installation, testing, and the charging-management software set-up.

Because the fixed parts (grid, transformer, engineering) are shared across all trucks, the cost per truck falls as the fleet grows — from roughly €37k/truck at 20 trucks to ~€23k/truck at 200 trucks. That is why the figure recalculates whenever you change the fleet size.

How much hardware?

• ~1 power cabinet per 10 trucks and ~1 dispenser per truck — for pure overnight charging every truck dwells at once, so each needs its own plug. The dispensers are cheap; the power behind them is shared.
• Higher truck-to-charger ratios exist, but only with daytime turnover (NACFE recorded US Foods on 1 charger per 3 trucks). Overnight can't do that — all trucks park at once — so this model conservatively assumes 1 dispenser/truck. Trucks returning in waves need fewer, dropping the cost further.
• Grid: ≤5 trucks may fit the existing low-voltage connection; from ~20 trucks you need medium-voltage + transformer (Fluvius: >250 kVA is always MV).

The four charging systems — all DC. Split-architecture systems lose less energy and cost less; we prefer them and flag the higher-loss options:

"Auto · low-loss split DC" (the default) always picks a low-loss split-DC system — never a higher-loss all-in-one: Kempower for small/mid fleets (≤80), Huawei for large fleets. You can still override it to any vendor; the higher-loss options stay selectable for comparison, but the tool will always show you their extra loss cost. A cost band (optimistic / central / conservative) reflects how much real quotes vary.

Note on AC charging: this model is DC-only. Windrose trucks charge on DC (CCS / MCS), not AC — and DC is the right choice for a depot anyway: the AC→DC conversion happens once, in the shared cabinet, rather than being lost in every truck's on-board charger. AC depot charging is not considered.

Why we deliberately skip a battery buffer (BESS):

• A BESS (on-site battery) earns its keep by shaving short, sharp demand peaks — which happen with fast/public charging, where lots of energy is forced through a small connection in minutes.
• An overnight depot has the opposite profile: a long, flat, low-power load. With smart load-spreading there is almost no peak to shave, so a €0.5–2M battery would mostly sit idle. Independent modelling agrees: a 2025 Fraunhofer study found that for an overnight depot the investment in a battery storage system is not profitable regardless of capacity — its cost exceeds the savings — and NACFE/RMI warn that some fleets over-built storage they never used.
• So BESS is excluded from the base case. It only becomes worthwhile if (a) the grid connection is hard-capped below your managed peak, (b) you add daytime fast-charging, or (c) you co-locate large solar.

And the Belgian peak-demand charge (capaciteitstarief)? Belgium bills businesses partly on their monthly peak power (maandpiek, €/kW). For naïve simultaneous charging this would be brutal — but because overnight software keeps the peak at ~65 kW/truck instead of 400 kW, the billable peak (and the charge) drops by roughly 4–6×. It becomes a normal, manageable operating cost rather than a deal-breaker — which is exactly why no battery buffer is needed to control it.

Turnkey ranges are planning-grade (±30%), triangulated from Alpitronic retail pricing (~€255/kW anchor), Smart Freight Centre, McKinsey, ICCT and 2025–2026 vendor data; high-power split systems (Huawei, Kempower, Siemens) are quote-only. These per-truck figures (≈€37k at 20 trucks falling to ~€23k at 200) sit in line with — and deliberately at the cautious end of — independent benchmarks: NACFE/RMI field data reports €14–19k per truck at scale, and the Fraunhofer/Transport & Environment depot-charging study (2025) puts infrastructure + grid connection at roughly €0.06/km for overnight (50 kW) charging. If anything this model is conservative, not optimistic. Get site-specific quotes before committing. Belgian grid context: Fluvius/VREG 2026 capacity tariffs, MV connection >250 kVA.

Depreciation / residual value — how it is modelled

At the end of the contract the trucks still have resale value. The model captures the net residual benefit of the electric fleet versus the diesel fleet (electric resale minus the diesel resale you would also have had) as a one-off cashflow in the final year. It is period-specific — a 5-year-old truck is worth more than a 10-year-old one — and you choose one of three scenarios:

Why electric residuals are treated cautiously: used EVs have so far depreciated faster than comparable diesels — battery packs lose ~2-3% capacity per year, and each new truck generation brings better range and faster charging, making older models feel dated. Buyers also discount for perceived battery risk. The longer you hold (10 yr), the more battery degradation and obsolescence erode the residual, which is why the figures fall steeply with the period.

Battery replacement is not modelled separately; a major pack replacement within the term would materially change these figures. Sources: MDPI / Recharged EV-depreciation studies 2025-2026.