E-trucks in Poland:
what wakes the sleeping giant?

The international haulier is already there

A Polish haulier who drives most of the year abroad. Nothing changes in the law here: this is the business case as it stands today.

The reason is the toll bill. Over seven years a diesel truck on this route pays … in road toll; an electric one pays …. All of that difference is earned abroad. Germany charges an electric truck nothing until 30 June 2031, against €0.348 a kilometre for a diesel. Austria, Czechia and the Netherlands give large discounts. At home, e-TOLL charges both trucks the same PLN 0.56 a motorway kilometre.

At home, the price tag decides

The same trucks, but every kilometre driven in Poland, and five years instead of seven — the period T&E uses. Nils Hooftman’s post is about Poland’s small and medium-sized hauliers, and many of them work mostly at home.

Road toll does nothing for the electric truck here. Over five years each truck pays … in e-TOLL, diesel or electric, because Poland has no discount for zero-emission trucks. A draft law adds CO₂ classes to e-TOLL, expected in 2027, but no rates are published. So the case rests on fuel and maintenance alone, and whatever those save is eaten first by the purchase price.

Free e-TOLL would pay for itself in the fleet

The domestic haulier from situation 2, if Poland let electric trucks use its toll roads for free. T&E points out that more than half of the EU member states already do something like this, as the Eurovignette rules allow.

T&E puts the saving at up to €32,000 per truck over five years; our model finds …, which is simply the e-TOLL bill from situation 2 taken off the electric truck. The two figures are close, and they come from different models.

E-credits: smaller, but money every month

Under the EU’s renewable energy rules (RED III), the power a charger puts into trucks can count toward a fuel supplier’s renewable target. Some countries already let the owner of a company charger sell that credit — the Netherlands, for one. Poland could allow it too.

We set the credit at €0.035 for every kWh the depot charger puts into a truck. That is the price at which a truck driving 100 000 km a year earns the €20,000 over five years that T&E mentions; in our model it comes to … per truck. Credit prices move with the market, so treat this as an order of magnitude.

Both levers: the domestic case turns

No e-TOLL for electric trucks and e-credits for the depot, both at once, still with no purchase grant.

Twenty trucks: the small firm pays more per truck

A small domestic haulier with a fleet of 20 trucks instead of 80. The depot chargers cost more per truck when there are fewer trucks to share them, and that shows.

The NFOŚiGW grant: already there, hardly used

The same small firm, now with the purchase grant Poland already offers. NFOŚiGW pays a small company 60% of what an electric truck costs more than a comparable diesel, up to PLN 750,000 (about €176,000) per truck, from the Modernisation Fund. The call is open until 30 June 2029.

And yet uptake has been slow: 89 applications by May 2026. The grant is paid once and fixed, while a toll exemption or e-credits pay every month the truck drives. A bank looks at the monthly money. That may be part of why a generous grant on paper does not turn into trucks on the road, and why T&E asks for longer transport contracts and loans that national banks help de-risk.

Half the kilometres in Germany do what Warsaw won’t

A haulier who runs half the year in Poland and half in Germany: one of the most common runs for a Polish truck. Five years, no grant, no change in Polish law.

Over five years a diesel truck on this run pays … in toll, an electric one … — and all of that is the Polish half. Germany’s exemption runs until 30 June 2031, so a truck bought today drives most of its life under it.