You could certainly appeal to their appreciation for reliability. Consider this, does an electric vehicle have ANY emissions reducing equipment at all that one must maintain?

The unreliability of the emissions gear is usually what comes up when I talk to diesel folks. Rolling coal is a fun extra for them.

Just musing now, but the diesel guys today seem to say a lot of the same things the gas guys said in the 80s with their EGRs and cats and vacuum lines galore under the hood destroying their reliability. Gas got variable timing and direct injection, and is no longer so fragile. Maybe there's some room left for innovation there, maybe not.