The Terberg electric truck has a range of 62 miles, which will satisfy BMW's needs for the trial:
Electric truck takes up delivery duties for BMW in Munich
An admittedly limited market, but this represents the agile / iterative view of the world. If you can satisfy such a restricted route with an electric vehicle, then there will be other similar daily routes that are a little bit longer that can be handled. And you iterate on that and get a little more range, and a few more routes open up.
And with enough range, you start being able to handle less well defined routes, but within a well defined daily limit.
It's a long ways away from the open highway and handling the bulk of US big rig transportation, but its steps like these that lead bit by to exactly that end result.
I get excited about every one of these sorts of things I read about - electric sailboat, electric truck. I got a 56v trimmer as a graduation gift - it's exciting to me to see how many of the yard maintenance tools can be made electric and handle decently sized lawns. And all of it represents a step, big or small, towards the ability to make use of renewably generated energy to fully run our energy intensive lifestyle.
I'm really looking forward to batteries making their way into farm tractors and similar machinery. I'd love to be able to run a hobby scale farm with purely electric tools and equipment - that'd be a big step towards a sustainable food creation cycle.