I think heavy duty trucks and such will still work on gasoline even in an EV future. So why don't these companies try to solve that problem in a carbon neutral way?
Heavy duty vehicles will move to either diesel/biogas hybrids (they can replace ~30% of the diesel with gas nowadays without any major engine mods) or to full CBG with combustion engines. Farms can produce their own CBG with relatively minor investment, basically fueling all work vehicles with cow farts =)
Some kind of hydrogen/biogas generator hybrid might be viable too.
Some will become fully electric, but it's heavily dependent on the usage profile. There is a mining truck in use today that's never charged - but it's a special case where it goes uphill empty and comes back down in full load with regenerative braking.
Diesel will slowly go away because of the ever tightening emissions noose. It's just getting harder and harder to have something that's both compliant and has a lifetime TCO that's lower than equivalent gasoline engines that can more easily meet their (more stringent) emissions requirements.
The bar for what kind of usage makes diesel cheaper than gas over all is constantly creeping higher. Notice how a huge fraction of smaller medium duty trucks have gasoline engines these days.
Having trouble parsing this, does this mean there is a liquid fuel thats diesel+cow farts or will diesel engines incorporate compressed biogas injection?
It's just hard to manufacture gas in a efficient way. It's a really complex and hard to make molecule and the most abundant source of ingredients for it is the carbon in the ground.
You can use atmospheric carbon but it's very hard to pull it down out of the air because it's very dilute.
That's why hydrogen is such a big deal and being focused on instead. It's harder in every respect, but the base component is water, which is very easy to get.
Some kind of hydrogen/biogas generator hybrid might be viable too.
Some will become fully electric, but it's heavily dependent on the usage profile. There is a mining truck in use today that's never charged - but it's a special case where it goes uphill empty and comes back down in full load with regenerative braking.