Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 30/ 31

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about commercial fleets in calendar weeks.

00:00:06: thirty-and-thirty one.

00:00:08: Frenness is a B to D market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building featurebyfeature competitive intelligence That shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

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

00:00:21: So today we are looking at the top commercial fleet trends and these are sourced directly from the industry's actual experts on LinkedIn.

00:00:28: If you're managing mobility operations or building fleet tech, were diving into exactly what

00:00:39: new deployment economics of fleet electrification because that is shifting fast.

00:00:44: Oh, absolutely!

00:00:45: And we'll also talk about how AI is finally moving from just sitting on dashboards to taking direct action.

00:00:51: plus there's this whole terrifying legal reality around maintenance compliance now

00:00:55: which is a massive headache for operators right now.

00:00:58: it really is yeah and will wrap up with how global regulations are completely reshaping operating costs.

00:01:06: so let us jump into The conversation around.

00:01:10: commercial electric vehicles.

00:01:11: has, I mean it's officially moved past range anxiety and even vehicle availability.

00:01:17: Yeah completely that is old news.

00:01:19: the new headline we're seeing everywhere Deployment economics and just the sheer operational complexity of it

00:01:26: all.

00:01:26: Exactly, And Michael Barnard actually shared a great example Of this recently.

00:01:30: he was talking about Ember This company operating over a hundred electric coaches across Scotland's inner city network Which

00:01:37: is not an easy road profile?

00:01:38: No Not at all.

00:01:39: lots of elevation harsh weather.

00:01:41: but The crazy part Is they had to Actually buy utang coaches from China To pull this off.

00:01:45: wait really why china?

00:01:47: because the european in british manufacturers They simply couldn't meet embers employment timelines.

00:01:52: The legacy guys were just, you know too slow.

00:01:55: so Ember had to look elsewhere and actually get the hardware

00:02:17: on for heavy-duty retail routes.

00:02:22: And then Tremaine Johnson noted another one, Bartrams...

00:02:26: Right with the Mercedes trucks!

00:02:27: Exactly they added these Mercedes EACTRU's six hundreds.

00:02:30: but the brilliant part is that are running them in their customers paint.

00:02:34: so they painted them for global chair components to basically help that customer save ninety tons of carbon annually.

00:02:41: That such a smart business move.

00:02:42: you're selling sustainability back Totally.

00:02:45: But okay, I want to push back on this a little bit or just kind of ground it because when i see these fleet operators buying you know tenor thirty massive EV trucks It feels A LOT To me like a company Buying a huge state-of the art server

00:02:58: farm.

00:02:58: Okay?

00:02:59: I See where You're going with This.

00:03:00: Like The Hardware is finally Here and it Looks Amazing but do we actually have the grid Capacity to plug the Thing in.

00:03:08: Yeah, and that right there is the fundamental bottleneck.

00:03:11: Tim Harper actually observed this exact thing.

00:03:14: He pointed out that zero emission heavy goods vehicles are just stuck at roughly one percent market share in the UK Right now.

00:03:20: Just One Percent?

00:03:21: That's barely anything

00:03:22: Barely Anything!

00:03:23: And he argues The barrier isn't the sticker price anymore.

00:03:27: It Is the massive operational risk of trying to coordinate the finance The specialized insurance And most importantly...the depot infrastructure.

00:03:35: Because it's not just buying a truck any more.

00:03:37: No not at all.

00:03:38: Bradley Nelson made a brilliant point about this, he said ordering heavy-duty EVs isn't a transportation decision anymore.

00:03:45: it is quite literally a multi megawatt grid interconnection request.

00:03:49: oh man that puts it perfectly

00:03:52: right.

00:03:52: you aren't just calling a dealer your fundamentally altering the power grid and utilities measure their timelines in years while fleets measured theirs in months.

00:04:01: so they just clash entirely.

00:04:03: But some folks are finding ways around the utility bottlenecks like Johan Olsen shared this really creative solution from a company called Elify.

00:04:11: What did they do?

00:04:12: So, They built this charging platform that coordinates solar power and four Mercedes E-Actress trucks at Beko's Sudwest And it does all in real time

00:04:21: Dynamic load balancing.

00:04:22: Exactly, it prevents the depot from overloading its single shared grid connection.

00:04:27: It just shifts the power around smartly so they don't trip the main breaker while waiting for utility to upgrade their lines.

00:04:33: See that is exactly why the operational complexity of running fleets has skyrocketed.

00:04:38: Operators are desperately relying on data to manage this chaos.

00:04:42: But and This a big transition we're seeing The era of passive dashboard Is totally dead.

00:04:48: Just having fifty tabs open doesn't help anyone.

00:04:51: No, it's worse than useless!

00:04:53: Jesse Landry brought this up.

00:04:54: He noted that a company called ProAction just raised four point two million dollars And their whole focus is building AI native software That moves fleets away from reactive tracking and into proactive execution

00:05:06: Moving From Alerts to actual execution.

00:05:09: That's huge!

00:05:09: It is, Matt Himmelfarb highlighted a great example with Vinly Valona Agentec AI.

00:05:15: it doesn't just show you a chart of data...it actively flags actionable tasks.

00:05:21: so recommend reassigning this specific vehicle because it lost thirty two hundred dollars to idle time.

00:05:28: Wow, so that actually gives you the financial impact.

00:05:30: and then next step?

00:05:31: Exactly!

00:05:32: It does the thinking for you.

00:05:33: That's incredible.

00:05:34: And by the way if your listening If you want make sure catch future deep dives where we comment on these kinds of AI developments.

00:05:40: Yeah Take a second.

00:05:41: just hit subscribe on your podcast player?

00:05:43: Yeah definitely do that.

00:05:45: But y'know To give a grounded reality check here Dr.

00:05:48: Michael Seuss pointed out that the AI that is actually earning trust right now in fleets, Is mostly read only.

00:05:53: What does he mean by read-only?

00:05:55: In this context?

00:05:56: Well it essentially spends time learning what normal looks like for your specific operation and then It just flags anomalies Like if a delivery van is driving A hundred kilometers per hour toward a border at midnight when it shouldn't be.

00:06:09: Oh I see.

00:06:09: so its catching things of human would definitely miss in realtime Right,

00:06:13: and Tanner Uzkin reinforced this idea.

00:06:15: He said telematics only has value if it actually changes a maintenance decision.

00:06:19: Okay yeah that makes a lot of sense

00:06:21: because If you think about it passive telematix is really just like a check engine light.

00:06:25: A dashboard full of alerts Is just very expensive Check Engine Light if nobody in the shop Actually picks up a wrench.

00:06:32: That's great way to put

00:06:33: It The human execution that actually saves money

00:06:37: And to help those humans execute, we're finally seeing these legacy data silos breaking down right?

00:06:43: Mary Akevon posted about road flex direct which is this open API that basically lets fleets pull fuel card data straight into their own systems.

00:06:51: Oh nice so no more manual entry or downloading spreadsheets.

00:06:54: Exactly it bypasses all of the administrative friction and JC Van Heerden noted something similar happening in southern Africa.

00:07:01: Estra's unifying telematics fuel and financial data across their entire ecosystem.

00:07:07: Which is incredibly powerful for efficiency, but... And this the dark side of having all that perfect data?

00:07:12: It creates a massive new legal-and operational burden.

00:07:16: Right!

00:07:16: The liability aspect

00:07:17: Because if your systems tell you something's broken or a driver is fatigued You are fully liable If don't act on it immediately because

00:07:25: you can say you didn't know the system logged in Exactly.

00:07:29: Aaron Leilich and Samuel Elkins both talked about this.

00:07:32: They pointed out that a post-accident protocol is now essentially a courtroom exhibit...

00:07:37: That's terrifying for a fleet manager!

00:07:39: It really is, if your telematics warn you of an issue like a degrading brake line and you ignore it to keep the route on schedule, plaintiff attorneys are gonna find that exact

00:07:48: gap….

00:07:49: So compliance isn't just about having a process binder in a shelf anymore?

00:07:53: No, its about documented proof that you acted—proof over process.

00:07:58: But the flip side is that closing those data gaps can also save a ton of money.

00:08:02: Jackson McKinney shared this really cool example where Fleadio helped a fleet tighten up their repair approvals just by integrating the data, they rejected sixteen percent of unnecessary service items.

00:08:14: Wow!

00:08:14: Sixteen percent?

00:08:15: That adds-up fast.

00:08:16: Yeah, they saved thirteen thousand dollars on a single repair just because they finally had visibility into what was actually needed.

00:08:23: An out-of-catch boop alarm noted the similar thing.

00:08:26: A home service fleet connected their internal system to local repair shop's API and suddenly it revealed twenty five overdue maintenance items that were completely hidden before.

00:08:37: It's just wild how much waste is hidden in those blind spots.

00:08:41: And it's not just maintenance, its human safety too!

00:08:43: Belisanto shared a video telematics trial that had some insane results...

00:08:48: Oh the one tracking driver behavior?

00:08:50: Yeah

00:08:50: by just implementing cameras and AI they cut mobile phone use two percent, ninety-two

00:08:57: percent

00:08:57: and fatigue events dropped by sixty three percent.

00:08:59: And the reason this matters so much is while Ashley Neubill highlighted a SAMBA safety report recently it showed that poor sleep is tied to a thirty six percent higher commercial auto accident risk

00:09:09: which is huge from an insurance and liability standpoint.

00:09:11: I'm like

00:09:12: let me ask you question here because

00:09:16: like literal micro expressions of driver fatigue.

00:09:20: And we have AI tracking every single dollar of idle time, why do these fleets still have such massive low tech operational blind spots?

00:09:28: It's a fair question

00:09:29: because Charlotte argues shared a geotab stat that just blew my mind.

00:09:33: they analyzed two point six million vehicles right and They found that heavy-duty trucks idle for over two hours a day.

00:09:40: Two

00:09:40: hours per

00:09:41: truck Yes.

00:09:43: And for the worst, ten percent of fleets that equals a hundred and five million dollars wasted annually just sitting there idling.

00:09:50: Yeah so with all this tech how does that still happen?

00:09:53: Well the reality is that fleets aren't just fighting their own internal inefficiencies.

00:09:57: they are constantly at the mercy of external rapidly changing regulations that honestly often lack basic operational logic.

00:10:04: Okay!

00:10:04: So external friction is erasing the internal gains.

00:10:07: Exactly you can have the best AI in the world but if a policy disrupts Alberto Ratti shared a perfect update on this from the EU.

00:10:16: The revised Eurovignette directive now ties heavy goods tolls directly to CO-II

00:10:20: emissions.".

00:10:21: Okay, that sounds good in theory right?

00:10:22: In theory yes!

00:10:24: Zero emission trucks pay zero toll until twenty thirty one but the diesel trucks are being charged based on these old registration categories.

00:10:32: Wait so even if a diesel fleet makes operational improvements to lower their actual emissions they don't get credit.

00:10:38: Nope...the

00:10:38: toll is based on the old paperwork not their actual current operational emission reductions.

00:10:44: It completely fails to reward practical

00:10:46: improvement.".

00:10:47: It's like the bureaucracy just can't keep up with a physical reality.

00:10:51: Exactly,

00:10:51: and when you look globally You see very different approaches to regulation.

00:10:55: Like Dustin McDonald pointed out what The Port of Los Angeles is doing They are just throwing massive money at the

00:11:01: problem.

00:11:02: I saw that like seventy five million dollars in incentives right?

00:11:05: Yeah

00:11:05: Up two three hundred thousand dollars per zero emission truck.

00:11:08: So they're heavily subsidizing it.

00:11:10: But then contrasts That With New Zealand Which James Barnes posted about.

00:11:13: New Zealand Is actually deregulating To save fleets Money.

00:11:17: Oh, how so?

00:11:18: They now allow fleets to convert their old mechanical hubidometers.

00:11:21: The

00:11:21: little mechanical axle counters!

00:11:23: Yeah exactly they can convert those to electronic road user charge units for just two hundred and fifty bucks... ...they just remove the friction instead of throwing millions at it.

00:11:32: See that makes much more sense than me.

00:11:34: But sometimes even well-intentioned policy Just creates a physical nightmare Like Christina Shadrina shared this wild cautionary tale from Ontario.

00:11:44: The

00:11:44: tire recycling thing?

00:11:46: Yes,

00:11:46: Ontario recently introduced a sixteen dollar per tire Recycling fee for commercial trucks which you know makes sense environmentally.

00:11:54: You tax it up front to fund the recycling

00:11:56: right pretty standard policy intent.

00:11:59: But the execution was just a total disaster through municipalities stopped accepting the scrap tires faster than the collectors could actually grab them.

00:12:07: Yeah, so it resulted in a massive physical backlog.

00:12:09: There are up to a million uncollected tires just sitting around.

00:12:13: the fleets Are paying the fee taking the financial hit.

00:12:16: but The physical infrastructure completely failed To support the mandate.

00:12:19: and

00:12:19: that honestly is the perfect summary of where the industry Is at right now.

00:12:24: because if you think about It there's this massive gap

00:12:26: between the policy And the pavement.

00:12:28: essentially

00:12:28: Exactly.

00:12:29: I mean, Nicole Shelton highlighted New York's twenty-fifty net zero targets which are these grand policy ambitions.

00:12:35: but the gap between that vision and the literal groundwork of say getting a megawatt grid connection or just picking up a scrap tire is where.

00:12:49: but everything else is lagging.

00:12:50: Exactly!

00:12:51: The physical infrastructure and the human execution, they just have to catch up...the friction in real world now.

00:12:57: It

00:12:58: really does.

00:12:58: Well if you enjoy this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:13:02: Also check out our other additions on charging & battery technology Autonomous immobility markets And software defined AI-defined vehicles.

00:13:10: Yeah thanks so much for joining us with this deep dive.

00:13:12: Just a final quick reminder to hit subscribe.

00:13:14: So don't miss next one.

00:13:15: Catch ya later.