Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 36/ 37

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 six and thirty seven.

00:00:08: Frenness is a BDB market research company that supports automotive suppliers with building feature-by-feature competitive intelligence That shows exactly how their product stacks up against the competition.

00:00:18: you can find more info in the description.

00:00:20: so Imagine buying a brand new zero-emission double decker bus for like five hundred and fifty six thousand pounds, And then watching its value just totally plummet to thirty thousand pounds in a few short years.

00:00:34: Oh

00:00:34: man because you literally can't find the fuel To run it right

00:00:37: exactly.

00:00:38: yeah that is The brutal reality of stranded assets Right now.

00:00:41: so welcome to this deep dive.

00:00:42: if your mobility professional You already know what?

00:00:44: This industry's Just being Completely upended.

00:00:46: Oh,

00:00:47: absolutely.

00:00:47: today we're looking at the top trends across LinkedIn that are reshaping commercial fleets.

00:00:51: We're talking about the new math of electrification how telematics is shifting into this aggressive financial tool and why surprisingly The human element is suddenly the biggest bottleneck.

00:01:02: Yeah Let's jump straight in to that new math because fleet economics or being rewritten in real time I mean were seeing This massive widening of the cost gap between internal combustion and electric vehicles

00:01:13: right?

00:01:13: Because a fuel costs.

00:01:14: yeah

00:01:15: Angelo E shared a brilliant breakdown of this.

00:01:18: When diesel hit that record, six dollars or five and seven in the U S The baseline totally changed.

00:01:24: Suddenly the electric truck cost advantage widened to sixty cents

00:01:29: per mile.

00:01:30: Wow, sixty cents Yeah.

00:01:32: So for a class eight tractor running one hundred thousand miles a year That translates to sixty thousand dollars in fuel savings per truck annually.

00:01:39: That is wild!

00:01:40: And the crazy part, that massive financial win happened without a single upgrade to EV hardware itself.

00:01:46: It's just the macro environment

00:01:47: and you know The mechanism behind that Is what fleet managers really need To pay attention too because diesel prices are so violently volatile.

00:01:54: But

00:01:54: yeah they swing by entire dollars

00:01:56: Exactly based on crude oil shipping lanes whatever.

00:01:59: but commercial electricity is generally locked in through multi-year contracts.

00:02:04: it moves By like fractions of a cent.

00:02:06: So when fossil fuels spike your EV operating margin just balloons instantly,

00:02:11: right?

00:02:11: Even if the purchase price is high.

00:02:13: But I take that a step further because you can have all these spreadsheet savings and it means absolutely nothing If you can't physically plug the truck in

00:02:21: infrastructure.

00:02:22: It's always infrastructure.

00:02:23: It really is its no longer Just a hurdle.

00:02:26: It is the absolute binding constraint of the industry

00:02:29: Yeah And that is the exact consensus coming from analysts like Nigel Jakeman an Adam Orth Fleet.

00:02:36: electrification has completely decoupled from just buying faster chargers.

00:02:40: So you think the grid can't handle

00:02:41: it?

00:02:41: Right, It doesn't matter if your hardware can deliver peak kilowatts.

00:02:44: If you're staring down a three-year lead time Just to get a grid connection upgrade From utility

00:02:49: Three years That's brutal.

00:02:52: Or worse The local substation literally lacks capacity.

00:02:55: Yeah so we are entering this era Where dynamic load balancing is mandatory.

00:03:00: Think of managing water pressure in an old neighborhood.

00:03:03: If every single house turns on the shower at seven

00:03:05: a.m.,

00:03:05: it drops to a trickle, or the pipes burst.

00:03:08: The software has to orchestrate which truck gets power and when based upon departure schedules.

00:03:12: so you never exceed the depots grid limit Which is complex because hardware's getting insane.

00:03:18: Diego Pereschi highlighted BYD as flash charging v-two At IAA transportation event.

00:03:24: Oh

00:03:24: i saw that.

00:03:25: Yeah they're pushing fifteen hundred kilowatts through a single cable.

00:03:28: That takes a truck from twenty to eighty percent in twenty minutes.

00:03:31: That's incredible engineering.

00:03:33: Yeah, but if you plug ten of those in simultaneously without load balancing it

00:03:37: literally melt the grid.

00:03:38: yeah You know there is a flip side to that grid stress.

00:03:42: A park truck Is basically a rolling battery.

00:03:45: Yolk Wormuth pointed out a major shift here with The merger of power flex and the mobility house.

00:03:50: Oh right for VDG?

00:03:52: Yeah

00:03:52: vehicle-to-grid tech.

00:03:53: Instead of just pulling power, fleets can get paid to stabilize the grid during shortages.

00:03:58: You turn a depreciating asset in a parking lot into a localized power

00:04:02: plant.".

00:04:02: That completely changes the total cost-of ownership model.

00:04:06: but

00:04:07: we have to talk about that massive blind spot destroying those TCO models.

00:04:11: Residual values.

00:04:12: The

00:04:13: silent killer.

00:04:14: Seriously!

00:04:15: Nikki Denadio brought up this sobering stat Over sixty percent of new EVs in Europe are bought by fleets and leasing companies.

00:04:23: But as those leases end, the secondary market just isn't there to absorb them.

00:04:28: People

00:04:29: are terrified of battery degradation.

00:04:30: Exactly!

00:04:31: Companies like AutoTrader UK or AVENS take massive hits.

00:04:35: which brings us back to that five hundred fifty six thousand pound bus I mentioned at.

00:04:39: Ah, yes.

00:04:40: Michael Barnard's case study out of Aberdeen this stranded hydrogen double-deckers.

00:04:45: Right supply chain issues cut off the hydrogens.

00:04:47: so buses were grounded and when first bus bought them for salvage they paid thirty thousand pounds each Which

00:04:52: is what like five percent?

00:04:53: Of a cost by

00:04:53: point four percent.

00:04:54: They essentially bought them as empty metal chassis hoping to repower them with battery electric drivetrains.

00:05:00: if A massive operator can barely make that salvaged math work The outlook for experimental fleets is terrible.

00:05:06: Yeah, and even with standard battery EVs Pam Hanlon uncovered this really frustrating thing with public charging networks.

00:05:13: Some providers are quietly embedding fifteen pounds monthly hidden fees onto charge cards before a vehicle even plugs in just

00:05:20: completely destroying any pricing transparency.

00:05:22: exactly

00:05:23: so here's the contradiction we have to reconcile.

00:05:25: if fuel savings or sixty thousand dollars out of truck Why isn't every fleet transitioning tomorrow?

00:05:30: Are they just paralyzed by grid delays and residual value

00:05:34: fears?"?

00:05:34: In a

00:05:35: lot of cases, yeah.

00:05:36: The friction is not the truck anymore it's the whole ecosystem

00:05:38: Right!

00:05:39: And to survive that ecosystem They need absolute granular data Which transitions perfectly into our second theme.

00:05:45: Telematics is shifting from just showing dots on a map to like hardcore financial intelligence.

00:05:51: Oh, the volume of data's staggering!

00:05:53: When Han shared an incredible breakdown historically A Scandered Telematic box read about sixty-six data messages location speed fuel level.

00:06:01: But a modern trucks internal nervous system produces over fifty five hundred distinct signals.

00:06:06: right but they use can FD flexible data rate networks.

00:06:10: It's like a massive broadband connection But legacy fleet systems only speak classic CAN.

00:06:15: Which is basically dial-up?

00:06:17: Exactly, but when Hans team developed a controller that translates the broadband traffic down to dial up exposing over three thousand four hundred signals through standard port and you don't even have to rip or replace existing hardware.

00:06:30: That is wild.

00:06:31: It's like a universal translator and when you unlock three, four hundred signals the financial applications are huge.

00:06:37: Ron Sullivan actually calls this fleet fine ops.

00:06:40: Fleet Fine Ops.

00:06:41: I liked that.

00:06:42: yeah

00:06:42: You standardize in time stamp costs against asset.

00:06:45: events aren't just tracking miles, you're building a financial memory.

00:06:49: Okay, Financial Memory is brilliant concept!

00:06:52: You can correlate a harsh breaking event on a Tuesday to an accelerated breakpad cost three months later by treating telematics as a financial ledger.

00:07:00: fleets are reporting eight-to twelve percent baseline savings.

00:07:03: one case even hit twenty six percent.

00:07:05: that's massive

00:07:06: but there's a glaring missed opportunity.

00:07:09: sitting in all this data Jeff Huebner noted that eighty-eight percent of fleets use telematics for safety, but are the ones not sharing data with insurers?

00:07:16: Seventy nine percent said no one ever asked.

00:07:19: That is a phenomenal breakdown in communication.

00:07:22: you're sitting on terabytes of data proving your lower risk But you're priced on an industry average right...but

00:07:28: AI is stepping in here.

00:07:30: Umakata Narkid highlighted Halyeri's AI agents.

00:07:34: They ingest fragmented fleet data loss runs, telematics driver history and fuse it into one single evidence layer for

00:07:42: underwriters."

00:07:42: That makes total sense...and the tracking is expanding beyond the cab too!

00:07:46: Jason J. Rule brought up Geotab, acquiring Link Labs to track tools trailers and site equipment on the same platform.

00:07:53: just

00:07:53: putting everything in a single pane of glass

00:07:55: yeah And it's paying off

00:07:56: fast.

00:07:57: Tony Pereira Rodriguez shared a European report showing fifty-four percent of fleets hit Telematics ROI In under twelve months.

00:08:05: real quick if you are finding these insights valuable for your fleet strategy make sure To subscribe.

00:08:09: do this deep dive so you don't miss our future editions.

00:08:12: we track all This So You Don't have to.

00:08:13: It really is A full time job.

00:08:16: But I do have a pushback on all this software optimism because despite these ROI claims fleet software valuations are taking a beating.

00:08:23: Oh, you mean the volunteer sale?

00:08:25: Yes Michael Seuss analyzed volunteer sale of TeleTrack.

00:08:29: Navmin headline price was two hundred and twenty million dollars but they retained a minority stake finance the buyer and still booked an eighty six million dollar loss.

00:08:39: Why is the market punishing fleet tech if the data so valuable?

00:08:43: Well, it feels like Wall Street treats trucks high-frequency trading servers.

00:08:49: They want CuraSauce's multiple software as a service zero marginal cost of distribution.

00:08:54: But fleet management involves the physical world.

00:08:57: Exactly you have to manufacture hardware.

00:08:58: go to a muddy depot wire into a dashboard.

00:09:01: Scaling fleet tech requires heavy physical lifting and the market is just realizing that.

00:09:05: And that physical friction leads right in our third theme The human element.

00:09:11: Data is utterly useless if it doesn't translate to the people driving the trucks.

00:09:14: The psychology has so overlooked.

00:09:16: Samuel Elkins highlighted a crazy survey on driver safety tech.

00:09:20: When drivers were properly onboarded like,the company explained why.

00:09:23: cameras where there.

00:09:24: They rated coaching effective seventy-four percent of time

00:09:27: And they skipped onboarding.

00:09:28: It

00:09:28: plummeted nineteen percent.

00:09:30: Yeah!

00:09:30: The most damning part was that twenty percent said the tech just magically appeared in their cab one morning with zero explanation.

00:09:39: Right

00:09:40: That's not a safety tool, that is just spying on your employees.

00:09:43: It's an instant labor grievance!

00:09:45: The hardware is only half the investment.

00:09:47: The human integration is the other half and how managers use data matters too.

00:09:52: NGB Bern argues that crash history is totally retrospective.

00:09:56: it tells you where metal has already been.

00:09:58: we have to use leading measures

00:10:00: like using telematics spot risk conditions before crashes happen.

00:10:04: Flagging a spike in speeding or maintenance delays allows the manager to intervene.

00:10:08: Right, and safety is external too.

00:10:10: Leigh-Anne Hansen shared this hardware solution – Waltco's Aftermarket ARC Safety Light!

00:10:15: It projects a one hundred eighty degree red zone onto pavement around lift gate… And it's after market upgrade so you don't wait for new truck cycle?

00:10:23: You can just close visibility gaps on mixed stage fleet tomorrow …and that consistency is key for workflows.

00:10:29: Colin Knitzen reported on an EV rental fleet of eleven hundred vehicles.

00:10:34: By consolidating maintenance onto one platform, they cut body repair downtime from thirty-eight days to twenty two days.

00:10:40: Whoa!

00:10:41: Yeah.

00:10:42: Saved over six hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars in nine months just by fixing communication.

00:10:47: Zakaria Zagari noted Renault optimizes doing something similar using predictive maintenance to cut van down time upto fifty percent because when a commercial vans stops The revenue stops.

00:10:59: Absolutely, but you also have to manage the assets properly.

00:11:02: Ray Miller pointed out a fleet's biggest cost isn't fuel or maintenance.

00:11:05: It's unutilized asset just

00:11:07: trucks sitting there

00:11:08: right.

00:11:08: if your at sixty percent utilization four out of ten assets are pure costs They're insured depreciating and generating zero return

00:11:15: in the back office.

00:11:16: workflow matters Just as much.

00:11:18: Jero K brought up compliance automation.

00:11:20: It shouldn't just be about faster document searches, it's about reducing interruptions.

00:11:24: Yeah microinterruptions destroy a safety manager's ability to focus.

00:11:27: Which

00:11:28: brings me to big question.

00:11:29: We talk relentlessly about automation But the ROI drops by four times if a manager doesn't actually sit down and talk with the driver.

00:11:38: Are tech companies failing to sell implementation alongside this software?

00:11:42: I mean smart vendors know that login is worthless without change management.

00:11:46: And that tension brings us to our fourth and final theme.

00:11:49: What happens when we remove the driver entirely?

00:11:52: Ah,

00:11:52: new mobility models an autonomous operations.

00:11:56: it totally upends who controls The Fleet?

00:11:58: Nicholas Coat asked a great question Who actually operates a robo taxi fleet?

00:12:03: well

00:12:03: We ride shows green Mobility in Denmark.

00:12:05: exactly not a tech partner, but a local car sharing operator.

00:12:09: Because the local operator is best positioned to run day-to-day.

00:12:12: They know how clean cars fix flats negotiate depot leases

00:12:16: because the billion dollar AI stack Is just one layer.

00:12:19: you still have to manage the metal.

00:12:20: But Tesla is pushing ahead too.

00:12:22: Jose Bueno noted.

00:12:24: they began public cyber cab rides in Austin using A purpose built two seater

00:12:28: right running parallel with their Model Y service.

00:12:31: a cheaper two-seater drastically alters the unit economics of urban riot hailing.

00:12:37: But these new models still face old hurdles.

00:12:40: Yeah, Mark Roberts highlighted Zipcar's UK exit.

00:12:42: they removed twenty five hundred shared vehicles

00:12:45: and that wasn't a failure.

00:12:46: this shared model right?

00:12:48: The unit economics have hourly rentals are proven.

00:12:51: It was fragmented parking policies that killed it.

00:12:53: Yes, local boroughs charging like two thousand pounds for a single parking bay... That regulatory greed just suffocated the margin!

00:13:00: It's

00:13:00: fascinating.

00:13:01: you build a billion dollar autonomous stack but at two-thousand pound parking fee completely collapses the business model.

00:13:08: Meanwhile logistics companies are shrinking their footprints to avoid this.

00:13:11: Priscilla

00:13:11: O'Dellavara shared that Amazon launched its first cargo bike grocery delivery from a London micro hub

00:13:17: Literally replacing last mile vans just to bypass parking in congestion.

00:13:22: It's an incredible pivot, and while local delivery shrinks the global market is shifting.

00:13:26: Christopher Leigh shared a study projecting Chinese commercial vehicle OEMs could reach eight percent of the European market share by twenty thirty three

00:13:33: Eight percent?

00:13:34: That is roughly half of Daimler Trucks current share.

00:13:37: it's massive disruption.

00:13:38: they are leveraging cost competitiveness and EV focus To bypass legacy diesel brands entirely.

00:13:45: So our regulators The ultimate gatekeepers Of next-gen mobility because it seems like they hold all the cards.

00:13:52: They absolutely are, and that brings me to a final thought for you to mull over with bidirectional charging massive data output in localized eponymous operations.

00:14:01: The commercial vehicle is no longer just away-to-move

00:14:04: goods.

00:14:05: It's so much more than them!

00:14:06: It has becoming a mobile power plant A rolling datacenter And I highly contested real estate asset In the next five years... ...the most valuable part of a fleet might not be what carries on back but the data and energy it trades

00:14:38: along.