Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 22/ 23

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about commercial fleets in calendar weeks, twenty-two and twenty three.

00:00:09: Frenness is a B to B market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building feature by future competitive intelligence shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:19: you can find more info.

00:00:21: Yeah, and today we are laser focused on the top commercial fleet trends that have been popping up all across LinkedIn over those last two weeks.

00:00:29: Our mission here is to you know separate the hype from the actual On The Ground operational transformations.

00:00:35: Right.

00:00:36: so welcome to this deep dive because honestly If you're a mobility professional trying to navigate this shift right now, it can feel a bit well like buying state-of the art sports car getting at home and then suddenly realizing your driveway is just this muddy dirt path.

00:00:50: And the nearest gas station has three states away

00:00:52: exactly.

00:00:53: The vehicle's totally ready for the future but hasn't caught up yet.

00:00:59: I mean, we fall into this trap of thinking new tech adoption.

00:01:03: is this clean simple switch right?

00:01:05: Like buy the new trucks park them in a lot and boom green revolution!

00:01:10: Yeah but looking at the raw data and the conversations from actual fleet operators it's anything but Honestly, frustrating landscape.

00:01:20: It really is and we should probably start with the big picture because The scale of what's happening it just staggering.

00:01:26: fleet.

00:01:26: electrification isn't a pilot program anymore?

00:01:31: massive shift.

00:01:32: Even if our perception is lagging behind the data, I mean i was looking at insights shared by Gavin Mooney and Assad Razouk about the eastern markets.

00:01:38: yeah And then numbers out of China are they're wild.

00:01:41: Electric truck sales there just surpassed fifty percent Of their monthly sale.

00:01:45: wait

00:01:45: fifty percent.

00:01:46: that's not Just a trend anymore That's a

00:01:48: tipping point Gagley.

00:01:49: it's reshaping global diesel demand entirely.

00:01:52: They're displacing something like one point seven million barrels of oil every single day.

00:01:56: Wow, and you know we're seeing that massive logistical shift in the West too.

00:01:59: I saw the updates from Amazon executives Car A Terst and Kerry Constabile And they reported having over fifty thousand electric delivery vans live globally.

00:02:10: Fifty

00:02:11: thousand?

00:02:11: That's huge!

00:02:12: Yeah

00:02:13: And they are already halfway to their twenty thirty deployment goal and those vans delivered two point four billion packages.

00:02:20: So this isn't just for show.

00:02:22: the actual backbone of global e-commerce is actively running on battery power right now,

00:02:26: Right?

00:02:26: But let me push back a bit because that sounds great.

00:02:29: but if the numbers or so good why is there still some much hesitation out There.

00:02:33: Is This Like The Early Days Of Smartphones Where People clung to their flip phones because they were just terrified the battery would die before five p.m..

00:02:40: That is honestly, The Perfect Analogy Because the hesitation today Is mostly operational psychology not the actual tech.

00:02:47: Jamie Sands highlighted this fascinating contradiction.

00:02:49: in the UK market right now about seventy percent of uk operators say They have no plans for zero emission vehicles.

00:02:55: seventies percent yeah

00:02:57: and Their number one reason range fear

00:02:59: range fear.

00:03:00: so there worried the truck will Just Die on the highway And I'll Have To explain to a client why their shipment is stuck on the side of

00:03:27: Fleet.

00:03:27: operators have to focus on total cost of ownership, or TCO instead of just the upfront acquisition costs.

00:03:34: Right treating them as financial assets because the sticker price is higher sure but lower fuel and maintenance costs offset that pretty quickly right?

00:03:42: Yeah

00:03:42: exactly you're eliminating the volatile variables like diesel prices and heavy mechanical maintenance.

00:03:47: TCO aggressively favors the electric model once you do the math.

00:03:51: okay if that makes sense.

00:03:55: If the TCO math works and range isn't the real issue, what's actually stopping a fleet manager who wants to electrify today?

00:04:03: Well it is the depot.

00:04:05: And more specifically...the local power grid.

00:04:08: Angelo E & Yorick Himmleis pointed out that the REAL TCO killer ISN'T the truck!

00:04:13: If you want to install DC fast chargers…you need industrial power….and getting grid upgrades can take get this three to seven years.

00:04:21: Three-to-seven years, you could cycle through a whole generation of trucks while waiting for the city to lay a cable

00:04:27: right.

00:04:27: and even if you have the power utility demand charges can just wreck your budget.

00:04:31: they penalize you from massive instantaneous power draws.

00:04:35: so if your fleet plugs in all at once that single fifteen minute spike can add tens of thousands of dollars

00:04:42: which totally vaporizes all the TCO savings you just gained.

00:04:46: But I saw this clever workaround for this from Michael Bayer at ADS Tech Energy in Angelo E, they were talking about battery integrated DC fast charging.

00:04:54: Yes The battery buffer approach

00:04:56: Yeah.

00:04:56: so instead of waiting to build a wider pipe for water You put like a giant water tower on your roof that fills up slowly overnight.

00:05:03: Exactly That's exactly how it works.

00:05:06: By using on-site batteries to buffer the charge from a standard low voltage connection, fleets can dodge those massive demand charged spikes.

00:05:14: The power dumps rapidly from battery to truck completely bypassing utility grid peak rates.

00:05:21: So you deploy in weeks instead of years?

00:05:23: Right and Neil Riddell stressed that this is why operators need to calculate total cost for charging not just electricity price.

00:05:31: look into shared depot infrastructure but it gets even better.

00:05:35: How so?

00:05:36: Moe Ismail points out that this setup actually turns your fleet into an energy asset because you have flexible onsite storage, You can earn money by trading on energy markets.

00:05:45: Wait really a parking lot making money.

00:05:47: Yeah!

00:05:48: Charting flexibility can earn fleets thirty thousand to fifty thousand pounds per megawatt yearly.

00:05:53: It's a game changer.

00:05:54: That

00:05:55: is wild, okay?

00:05:56: So while depots solve their power issues privately the public sector and like urban geography are physically forcing fleets to adapt to tighter spaces.

00:06:05: Oh no

00:06:05: absolutely!

00:06:05: The regulatory momentum is huge right now.

00:06:08: Yeah Keith Kerman and Alicia Gelde just helped launch this Bicostal Fleet Accord.

00:06:12: it unites NYC in LA County's municipal fleets.

00:06:16: that's forty seven thousand vehicles.

00:06:20: And Margo Ocic noted California's new one billion dollar rebate program for heavy trucks.

00:06:26: It is not just the usual blue states either, David Schlossberg points out that Texas has rapidly overtaken California as the electric truck

00:06:33: capital.

00:06:35: Yeah purely because of TCO advantages and fast infrastructure deployment.

00:06:39: Deregulation makes it easier to build chargers quickly!

00:06:44: Even if we make all these massive trucks electric and fix the charging, doesn't that just give us zero-emission traffic jams in cities built a hundred years ago?

00:06:52: Like a giant electric van blocking a bike lane is still blocking the bike lanes.

00:06:56: That's

00:06:56: the exact problem.

00:06:57: that's driving this shift toward microfreight.

00:06:59: Ryan Bostick shared that Amazon is piloting small electric cargo vehicles and e-bikes to beat dense city congestion.

00:07:06: Giant Rivian vans are great for suburbs, but a liability in ultra-dense cities!

00:07:10: Right.

00:07:11: so we're moving towards local micro hubs smaller vehicles doing the last mile

00:07:14: Exactly.

00:07:15: And adding to this futuristic shift, Hazim Ben-Gassem reported a two hundred and fifty million dollar funding round for Cargo X. They are deploying autonomous delivery bots across the GCC.

00:07:27: Okay so self driving boxes on wheels that is.

00:07:31: I mean running a complex mixed fleet of heavy EVs diesel trucks e-bikes an autonomous box.

00:07:39: You can't just use a spreadsheet for that.

00:07:40: No way, you need new kind of brain.

00:07:42: and That brings us to the operational shift driven by AI and telematics.

00:07:47: Zeshan Zahid notes that Telematics is no longer just tracking dots on a map It's a decision layer.

00:07:51: now fleets are moving from monitoring trucks To managing intelligence

00:07:55: And this intelligence actually finds hidden money.

00:07:57: Fakundo Tassara explained how AI Is catching fuel fraud specifically ghost fills.

00:08:02: Oh

00:08:02: those are brutal.

00:08:03: Yeah

00:08:04: Where a car is swiped but The tank level doesn't rise The AI catches it instantly, saving fleets up to twenty-five percent in losses.

00:08:10: And Samuel Elkins added that with freight margins as thin as twenty thousand dollars per truck eliminating compliance leakage is literally the only way to survive.

00:08:18: Exactly!

00:08:19: Every drop of fuel every minute of uptime counts.

00:08:21: but AIs also making the adoption frictionless for workers.

00:08:26: Amar Bosch highlighted an AI agent running on WhatsApp for firetruck fleets.

00:08:30: Oh I saw that.

00:08:31: so instead learning complex software crews can just text generate readiness report.

00:08:37: Yeah, it democratizes the data and DIY.

00:08:39: Del Mendo even talks about building telematics apps on local LLMs large language models to remove token cost anxiety during development.

00:08:48: because if you're running AI on a cloud server for thousands of trucks every second that gets expensive fast

00:08:54: right.

00:08:54: so doing it locally solves That

00:08:56: okay?

00:08:56: So AI handles the data It finds The fraud it routes the bots.

00:09:00: But what about the physical wrenches?

00:09:02: Like, if a truck breaks it's still sitting in a shop losing money.

00:09:04: Well actually not anymore!

00:09:06: David Fish and Vanneet Kumar shared some amazing insights on mobile maintenance.

00:09:10: Okay wait...what is that?

00:09:11: It means bringing The Service Bay directly to the asset.

00:09:14: Stellantis & Amazon ran up Pilot in Madrid where they did exactly this.

00:09:18: You completely decouple maintenance from downtime.

00:09:21: Its like having a pit crew fix your vehicle while you sleep?

00:09:24: Oh well So the van finishes its route Parks at the depot And while driver off of clock The mechanic comes to the lot and fixes it.

00:09:32: Exactly!

00:09:33: The vehicle never misses a delivery window.

00:09:36: That is brilliant.

00:09:38: Well, we've covered a ton of ground today And I want leave everyone with final thought to Mullover.

00:09:42: With vehicles turning into rolling batteries and AI managing every mile in kilowatt... ...the fleet manager of twenty-thirty won't just be in logistics.

00:09:51: No they definitely won't.

00:09:52: They're gonna need part energy trader Part data scientist.

00:09:56: So, the question is how will traditional mobility professionals need to reinvent their own skill sets?