One factor that people often forget when it comes to electric is that the economic life is longer than LPG powered equipment (less moving parts). If we say the economic life of LPG is 5 years or 12K hours, then a comparable electric doing th same jobs can be expected to be 7 years or 14K hrs. with proper TLC on the truck, battery & charger. A charger does not necessarily need to be replaced when the lift truck & battery is, but most the customers are not aware of this. The economics are there - just look at the difference in the customer cost of a monthly PM for electric vs LPG.
Two issues that get in the way are:
1. Financial - for tax purposes, the US the federal government, for the most part allows, a 5 year period for depreciation expense for all lift trucks. Financial types like that depreciation expense = less annual tax liability. There have been exceptions-I new a former major steel company in Gary, Indiana that had to depreciate lift over 20 years (lift trucks got thrown into the depreciation schedule as all steel making capital equipment expenditures.. The selling/servicing dealer enjoyed the complete rebuilds from the ground up every 3 years.
2. Maintenance/Procedures - End users are the biggest abusers of following proper charging methods, procedures & maintenance of the batteries. Here is where they can destroy a battery are greatly shorten the life. Through my experiences, it is my opinion the root of this is the installing dealer does not provide training to the proper personnel (operators &/or maintenance & supervision at time of delivery and often the end user does not a have a single assigned person of responsibility for this - this brings on the finger point game. Shame on the dealership, sales person, product support folks, etc.
A simple test is to ask the people who are supposed to be responsible for lift truck/battery care what the "Equalize" button on the charger does & when should it be used - you'll get the blank look of a deer staring into the headlight - 90% of the time. This goes for larger fleet users or the "Mom & Pop" operations and every body in between.