Shift Key with Robinson Meyer18 Jun 2025

It’s Easiest to Electrify This Type of Truck

You might not think that often about medium-duty trucks, but they’re all around you: ambulances, UPS and FedEx delivery trucks, school buses. And although they make up a relatively small share of vehicles on the road, they generate an outsized amount of carbon pollution. They’re also a surprisingly ripe target for electrification, because so many medium-duty trucks drive fewer than 150 miles a day.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with John Henry Harris, the cofounder and CEO of Harbinger Motors. Harbinger is a Los Angeles-based startup that sells electric and hybrid chassis for medium-duty vehicles, such as delivery vans, moving trucks, and ambulances.

Rob, John, and Jesse chat about why medium-duty trucking is unlike any other vehicle segment, how to design an electric truck to last 20 years, and how President Trump’s tariffs are already stalling out manufacturing firms. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap’s executive editor.

Mentioned:

Harbinger Motors

CalStart’s data on medium-duty electric trucks deployed in the U.S.

Here’s the chart that John showed Rob and Jesse.

It draws on data from Bloomberg in China, the ICCT, and the Calstart ZET Dashboard in the United States.

Jesse’s case for EVs with gas tanks — which are called extended range electric vehicles

Thor’s extended range electric vehicle RV

Jesse’s upshift; Rob’s downshift.

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