20 January/February 2026 | E-Mobility Engineering Will Gray reports on how BAE Systems plans to redefine the city streets, one truck at a time The electric workhorse As cities strive to achieve net zero goals, the electrification of mediumduty trucking has a major part to play – and BAE Systems believes it has the solution. Take a look around any busy metropolis and it is quickly apparent that Class 6 and 7 trucks are the workhorses of the city streets. Currently, more than 80% of these essential vehicles run on diesel – but with the acceleration of alternative fuels and electrification, this is predicted to decline rapidly to less than 50% by 2035. BAE Systems has already gone a long way in supporting the move to hybrid and electric solutions in the transit sector – which makes up a large part of the Class 6 and Class 7 usage – and the US-based company has now developed a solution that aims to translate its success in that sphere to the commercial market. The retro-fit electrification package, which can be applied to any vehicle of this type, may appear to be a brandnew concept, but it actually traces its roots way back to 2008, when Derek Matthews, who is now global partnerships manager, worked in a team exploring the potential for hybridisation in the trucking sector. That initial project stalled – owing to the popularity of compressed natural gas for working vehicles and the low price of traditional petroleum-based fuel – and Matthews says that until now the company has been in a “holding pattern” on emission-free technologies for commercial trucking. In the more familiar world of transit vehicles, however, BAE Systems had great success with its HybriDrive system – which that early truck work was based upon – and by 2016, it had delivered more than 7000 series hybrid-electric buses. The genius was being able to configure the set-up for
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