China's road freight transport capacity continued to expand in 2025, with more rapid green upgrade, according to a report released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) on Friday.

The report says China's road transport market continued to adjust and optimize, with capacity structure pacing up the upgrading to be large-scale, specialized, and green.

By the end of 2025, the national fleet of commercial freight vehicles reached 11.689 million units, up 1.1 percent year on year, displaying overall high saturation.

The report shows that amid declining freight rates and intensifying competition, road freight is going platform-based, digital, and intelligent to boost efficiency.

"We must use digitalization to restructure the capacity ecosystem, integrate scattered capacity resources, build a platform-based capacity coordination network, improve the efficiency of vehicle-cargo matching and the intensification level of transport organizations, so that the efficiency of every vehicle and every route can be optimized in the digital space," said He Hui, vice president of the CFLP.

The report also shows that while fuel vehicles still account for about 50 percent of road freight capacity, they are increasingly being replaced by new energy vehicles (NEV) in specific scenarios.

Among surveyed enterprises, the penetration rate of new energy trucks reached 44.4 percent. Of those that had purchased NEVs, 37.5 percent chose to "continue expanding the new energy fleet," while another 37.5 percent opted to maintain their current scale of NEVs.

New energy vehicles are mainly deployed in urban delivery, trunk line transport, and short-haul operations in ports and industrial parks.

In terms of operating experience, enterprises that had purchased NEVs almost unanimously recognized their energy cost advantages. A total of 87.5 percent of surveyed enterprises reported that per-kilometer energy costs were lower than fuel vehicles, with an average energy cost reduction of 42 percent.