Best of LinkedIn: Commercial Fleet Insights CW 02/ 03

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgeier and Frennus, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on commercial fleets from weeks O two and O three.

00:00:08: Frennus supports automotive enterprises and consultancies with market, customer and competitive intelligence in the commercial fleet sector with a strong focus on digital solutions and emerging technologies.

00:00:21: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:24: We've been tracking the conversation around commercial fleets and you know looking at the last couple of weeks The tone is really shifted.

00:00:31: It has.

00:00:31: it feels like we're moving from experimentation to well hard reality.

00:00:36: Exactly.

00:00:37: Less about what the future might look like and a lot more about what implementation actually costs.

00:00:41: Right, it's a move from that pilot phase mentality to hard-nosed operational reality.

00:00:46: I'd say the industry is waking up to the complexity of scale.

00:00:49: We're not just buying one or two electric vans anymore.

00:00:52: No,

00:00:52: we're talking about heavy-duty trucks, the grid constraints that can kill a project,

00:00:56: and the safety tech.

00:00:57: It's fundamentally changing how fleets are managed.

00:01:00: The conversation clusters are so distinct this time.

00:01:04: You've got heavy-duty electrification, which is proving to be more viable than many expected.

00:01:10: Then there's the energy piece, which is arguably becoming more critical than the vehicles themselves.

00:01:15: And finally, that surge in AI-driven safety and the operational politics that come with it.

00:01:21: That's the roadmap, and I think the best place to start is with the heavy metal.

00:01:25: because for so long, the real skepticism was around those bigger class four through class six vehicles.

00:01:32: The argument was always the same, right?

00:01:33: Yeah.

00:01:34: Batteries are too heavy, range is too short, cost is astronomical.

00:01:37: But the data we're seeing now suggests that whole narrative is, well, it's outdated.

00:01:41: The standout story has to be the one from John Henry Harris about FedEx.

00:01:45: Yeah, that was huge.

00:01:46: This isn't a press release about a future plan.

00:01:49: FedEx has ordered fifty-three vehicles to kick off the year.

00:01:51: And that's a significant move.

00:01:53: Harris points out something crucial here.

00:01:55: This is not a pilot.

00:01:57: Fleets have been stuck in what he calls pilot purgatory for nearly two decades, you know, buying one weird retrofitted truck, testing it, realizing it doesn't work, and scrapping

00:02:09: it.

00:02:09: This order feels like a real shift to deployment.

00:02:12: What really caught my eye in his breakdown was the price.

00:02:16: He notes that these vehicles, from Harbinger specifically, are achieving acquisition price parity with diesel starting at a hundred and three thousand dollars.

00:02:26: that is the headline.

00:02:27: that's effectively the same price as a freight liner.

00:02:29: mt-fifty five.

00:02:31: usually we're talking about a massive green premium often double the cost.

00:02:35: So how are they doing it?

00:02:36: Is it just subsidies?

00:02:37: or is there something fundamentally different here?

00:02:39: It's the engineering strategy.

00:02:41: Harris explains it through vertical integration.

00:02:43: A lot of those early electric trucks were, well, they were Franken trucks.

00:02:46: Taking a standard diesel chassis and just ripping out the engine.

00:02:49: Exactly.

00:02:50: Ripping it out and bolting in a battery pack from someone else.

00:02:52: It's inefficient and expensive.

00:02:54: Harbinger, he says, is building the chassis, the battery packs, the powertrain, all in-house.

00:03:00: So they own the supply chain.

00:03:01: They own the metal and the bits.

00:03:03: Harris says you have to own the metal to hit the right price, but you also have to own the bits, the software stack.

00:03:09: If you're paying mockups on everything, you'll never hit parity.

00:03:11: That moves us away from this idea that green tech is a luxury item.

00:03:15: It becomes a rational economic choice.

00:03:18: It does.

00:03:18: But while we're seeing these wins in North America, the sheer scale of what's happening in Europe really puts it in perspective.

00:03:25: Natalie Miles shared some numbers that are just... difficult to visualize.

00:03:28: The scale is massive.

00:03:30: She points out there are roughly six million heavy trucks on European roads.

00:03:35: To electrify that, you're talking about two terawatt hours of battery capacity.

00:03:41: Two terawatt hours.

00:03:42: That's, I mean, how do you even contextualize that?

00:03:45: Well, she did.

00:03:46: She noted it's equivalent to nearly three days of Spain's entire electricity demand.

00:03:50: Wow.

00:03:50: It's a colossal amount of energy.

00:03:53: But her point wasn't just about the size, it was a critique of how we planned to charge them.

00:03:57: She was pushing back against that megawatt corridor idea, wasn't she?

00:04:01: Exactly.

00:04:02: This myth that we need to replicate the diesel model giant filling stations blasting a megawatt of power into a truck in twenty minutes, she argues.

00:04:11: that's not the primary solution.

00:04:13: The low hanging fruit is depot charging.

00:04:15: Because

00:04:16: the trucks sleep.

00:04:17: They do.

00:04:17: If a truck is parked for eight to ten hours overnight, you don't need a megawatt charger.

00:04:22: You need a two hundred to four hundred kilowatt charger.

00:04:25: It's cheaper, less stress on the battery, and way easier for the grid.

00:04:29: And you co-locate that with solar and stationary batteries.

00:04:31: That's

00:04:32: the winning formula, she suggests.

00:04:34: But, you know, we have to be realistic.

00:04:36: We're not replacing six million trucks this year.

00:04:38: There was a very pragmatic post from Andrew Savage about what fleets can do right now.

00:04:42: The bridge

00:04:42: solution.

00:04:43: Right.

00:04:43: He highlighted the use of HVO- one hundred hydro-treated vegetable oil.

00:04:47: So for anyone not familiar, this is basically a renewable diesel alternative.

00:04:51: It works in existing engines.

00:04:52: It does.

00:04:53: It's a drop in fuel.

00:04:54: He notes his operations have used it for over three hundred and fifty five low carbon halls.

00:04:58: The key metric is it offers about a ninety percent reduction in carbon emissions.

00:05:02: And that's where the pragmatism.

00:05:03: comes in.

00:05:05: From a fleet manager's perspective, dropping carbon by ninety percent today without buying new trucks is a massive win.

00:05:13: It's about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

00:05:16: While you're planning grid upgrades, you can switch fuels and make an immediate impact.

00:05:20: And speaking of planning, the funding is definitely helping.

00:05:24: Nahui Allyn flagged Oregon's zero fleet program, which is putting up seventeen million dollars.

00:05:30: with big rebates too, up to sixty thousand dollars per vehicle.

00:05:33: And

00:05:33: in the UK Emma Tyra mentioned the government offering up to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds off electric trucks.

00:05:39: So the subsidies are an accelerant, but this brings us to the second theme, and honestly the biggest hurdle.

00:05:45: You can buy the truck, you can get the rebate, but can you plug it in?

00:05:48: The

00:05:48: grid bought on it.

00:05:49: It's the number one constraint.

00:05:51: The conversation has totally shifted from range anxiety to connection anxiety.

00:05:56: Natasha Fry put it very bluntly in her post.

00:05:59: She said most depots were basically just built as parking lots.

00:06:02: Right.

00:06:02: They were never designed to be power plants.

00:06:04: And if you get that wrong, it's an operational disaster.

00:06:06: She highlights the risk of vehicles ready before the power is.

00:06:09: So you order the trucks, they arrive, the lease payments start.

00:06:12: But the distribution network operator, the DNO, tells you the substation upgrade is eighteen months away.

00:06:18: And you have... A million dollars of assets just sitting there gathering dust.

00:06:22: Precisely.

00:06:23: Her advice is to engage the DNOs and landlords immediately before you even sign the purchase order.

00:06:30: And even if the power is there, the cost isn't static.

00:06:34: Mauricio Sardi shared some analysis from Slovenia that really lit this up for me.

00:06:39: The volatility he found is staggering.

00:06:41: Sardi's data showed charging during peak demand can be ten to a hundred times more expensive than off-peak.

00:06:47: Ten to a hundred times.

00:06:48: That just destroys any TCO model instantly.

00:06:51: It does.

00:06:52: If you treat an electric truck like a diesel one and just plug it in the second it gets back, usually at the evening peak, you are going to pay the highest possible rate.

00:07:00: So dumb charging is financially unviable.

00:07:02: It's financial suicide for a fleet.

00:07:05: Sari points out that smart energy management, you know, shifting that load automatically can save fifty to seventy percent.

00:07:10: It's not just about getting power, it's when you get it.

00:07:13: And this gets even more complicated when you scale up.

00:07:16: Roby Moyano raised the point that a single electric truck uses about ten times the energy of a

00:07:21: car.

00:07:22: So when you have fifty of them returning at five PM, Moyano calls that an energy orchestration problem.

00:07:28: You can't just rely on the grid to absorb it.

00:07:30: Which ties back to what Phil Jordan Newsbauer was suggesting.

00:07:33: Right.

00:07:33: The smart system approach.

00:07:35: Combining solar PV, charging infrastructure and BS.

00:07:39: BS being battery energy storage systems.

00:07:42: Yeah.

00:07:42: So giant batteries at the depot.

00:07:44: Exactly.

00:07:45: Think of the BS as a shock absorber.

00:07:48: You fill those stationary batteries when energy is cheap or the sun is out.

00:07:52: Then, when the trucks come in during peak hours, you charge them from your battery, not the grid.

00:07:57: It turns the depot into its own microgrid.

00:07:59: It's the only way the numbers work at scale.

00:08:01: You have to manage the electrons as carefully as you manage the drivers.

00:08:04: Okay, let's pivot to that driver element because the third cluster was all about safety and the tech inside the cab.

00:08:10: And the shift is from reactive recording to proactive prevention.

00:08:14: We're really seeing AI mature in this space.

00:08:16: For years dash cams were passive black boxes.

00:08:20: They just recorded a crash so you could figure out who to blame later.

00:08:23: The new tech is about intervening before the crash happens.

00:08:26: The posts from Hamza Hussain and Tayeb Shahzad Butt on Motive's new dash cam focused on edge AI.

00:08:33: For someone who isn't technical, why is that distinction between edge and cloud so critical?

00:08:39: It's all about speed, latency.

00:08:41: If a camera sees a car cut you off, you don't have time for that video to upload to the cloud, get processed, and send a signal back.

00:08:48: That takes

00:08:48: seconds.

00:08:49: And a crash takes

00:08:50: little seconds.

00:08:51: Right.

00:08:51: Edge AI means the computer chip is right there on the device.

00:08:54: It processes everything in real time.

00:08:57: It understands context

00:08:58: instantly.

00:08:58: So it can spot lane departures, unsafe following distances, and

00:09:02: even driver distraction, and then use a voice assistant to alert the driver immediately.

00:09:06: It's about breaking that chain of events.

00:09:08: And the results being reported are pretty remarkable.

00:09:11: Liam Wallström shared a case study on Redway Transport that just stopped me in my tracks.

00:09:15: The Redway case is the gold standard of what this tech promises.

00:09:19: They went from twenty-four at-fall accidents in a year to zero.

00:09:24: Zero.

00:09:24: That's a statistic that sounds almost too good to be true.

00:09:27: It

00:09:27: really highlights the power of this tech.

00:09:30: And Lydia Raven shared similar data from Samsara, noting that Midland hire services reduced accidents by fifty-four percent.

00:09:38: But there's a cultural hurdle here, right?

00:09:39: putting an AI camera in the cab that watches the driver's face, it screams Big Brother.

00:09:45: That

00:09:46: is the perennial challenge.

00:09:47: But Ruthier shared a really smart perspective from Speedy Hire.

00:09:51: The strategy is to shift the narrative from tattletail to coaching.

00:09:55: So it's not about punishment.

00:09:56: Exactly.

00:09:57: If the system is just used to generate a report of bad drivers so you can fire them, it will fail.

00:10:02: Drivers will revolt.

00:10:04: But if it's used to just nudge the driver, hey, you're following too close and the driver corrects it and no one in the office ever hears about it.

00:10:10: That's coaching.

00:10:11: It's a tool for them, not just for the boss.

00:10:13: Exactly.

00:10:14: And Chris Cabrera from Linux touched on making these tools easier to manage by unifying video and telematics into one platform, Litsuko.

00:10:21: Which is crucial, because we are all drowning in dashboards.

00:10:24: You can't have managers logging into three systems to figure out what happened.

00:10:27: No, silos are the enemy of efficiency.

00:10:30: And that data overload leads perfectly into our final theme.

00:10:34: Data, operations, and the human factor.

00:10:37: Mark Canton had a fantastic analogy about the shelf life of data.

00:10:40: The milk analogy.

00:10:41: I loved this.

00:10:42: He said, your old fleet data is not a fine wine.

00:10:46: It's milk.

00:10:47: Meaning it's boils.

00:10:48: It expires.

00:10:49: There's this tendency to hoard data thinking fifteen years of history is a goldmine.

00:10:53: Canton says that's a sunk cost fallacy.

00:10:56: The operational reality of five years ago, fuel prices, vehicle types, has nothing to do with today.

00:11:02: So keeping that old data isn't just useless.

00:11:04: It can be actively harmful.

00:11:06: It clouds the picture.

00:11:07: It slows everything down.

00:11:08: He suggests focusing only on the last three to five years.

00:11:11: That's your window of relevance.

00:11:12: That's a really actionable tip.

00:11:14: But beyond the data, Selenate Parlak brought up the politics of operations, which we don't talk about enough.

00:11:19: It's the reality of organizational silos.

00:11:22: She points out that the department paying for the equipment isn't always the one using it.

00:11:27: So procurement might choose a charger because it's five hundred dollars cheaper.

00:11:30: Looks great on their budget for the quarter.

00:11:32: But if that charger has a high failure rate, or doesn't integrate with the software, operations is left holding the bag.

00:11:39: The better technical choice often loses to the one that's politically expedient.

00:11:43: It's a reminder.

00:11:44: you have to understand who holds the power in that buying committee.

00:11:48: Speaking of honesty, Jamie Sands had a call to action that I think everyone should hear.

00:11:53: He wants us to stop polishing the results of trials.

00:11:56: The Instagram versus reality problem.

00:11:59: He argues that freight trials shouldn't be these perfect success stories.

00:12:02: They should be messy.

00:12:03: Because the failures are where the learning happens.

00:12:05: Exactly.

00:12:06: If a trial failed because the power wasn't where the drawing said it was, that is valuable intelligence.

00:12:12: If we hide the messiness, every other fleet is doomed to repeat those mistakes.

00:12:16: And finally, David Fish from Ford Pro touched on just how complex these fleets are.

00:12:22: They're rarely uniform.

00:12:23: No, they're mixed fleets.

00:12:25: It's a game of Tetris.

00:12:26: You have Fords, you have another brand, you have EVs, you have Diesel.

00:12:30: His whole point is that dashboards need to reflect this chaos.

00:12:34: You can't expect a manager to have five screens open.

00:12:37: Interoperability has to be the keyword.

00:12:39: It has to be.

00:12:40: One screen to rule them all.

00:12:41: Otherwise, the tech's efficiency gains are lost in administrative overhead.

00:12:45: It really seems like integration is the word of the week.

00:12:49: Integrating the chassis and batter to save costs.

00:12:52: Integrating solar and chargers to save the grid.

00:12:55: Integrating safety data to save the driver.

00:12:57: That is the thread connecting all of these posts.

00:13:00: The era of isolated experiments is over.

00:13:03: The systems and the departments all have to talk to each other.

00:13:05: So as we wrap up, what's the one question you think our listeners should be asking themselves this week?

00:13:11: I'd ask.

00:13:12: Are you planning your energy strategy with the same rigor as your vehicle strategy?

00:13:16: Because the risk isn't that you can't buy the truck.

00:13:18: The risk is you become the fleet with shiny EVs sitting in a dark depot because you forgot to call the utility company two years ago.

00:13:25: And are you treating your data like wine or like milk?

00:13:29: Check the expiration date.

00:13:31: If you enjoyed this episode, New episodes drop every two weeks.

00:13:34: Also check out our other editions on electrification and battery technology, future mobility and market evolution, and next-gen vehicle intelligence.

00:13:42: Thanks for listening.

00:13:43: Don't forget to subscribe.

00:13:44: See you next time.