{"id":2965,"date":"2019-06-27T16:25:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/?p=2965"},"modified":"2019-06-27T16:25:59","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:25:59","slug":"2965","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/2019\/06\/27\/2965\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future is Electric, But\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"By<\/p>\n

By all accounts, the electric truck market is “pre-commercialization,” with models in testing by almost all major truck makers and some upstart independents.\u00a0Fuso’s all-electric eCanter, seen here at the 2019 ACT Expo in Long Beach, hit production in the UK in early 2018 and has already deployed 100 vehicles in Europe, Japan, and most recently in the U.S.\u00a0Photo by Chris Brown.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Future is Electric, But\u2026<\/span><\/h3>\n
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Do you remember the time when automakers declared they were agnostic on the myriad of fuels and propulsion technologies coming online and which one would \u201cwin?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no silver bullet,\u201d they\u2019d say, referencing the new competition to traditional gasoline and diesel power: compressed and liquified natural gas (CNG\/LNG), propane, ethanol, biodiesel, electric powertrains 1.0, and the first hydrogen fuel cell science projects. \u201cThere are many ways to propel vehicles, and it\u2019s up to the user to decide based on preference and use case.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s still true today. But we may soon look back at that time the same way we view other bridge technologies such as the Pony Express and the Discman. We\u2019re now past that agnosticism. The OEMs have chosen a propulsion-technology winner, and it\u2019s electric.<\/p>\n

This point was driven home at the 2019 Act Expo in Long Beach, Calif. in April. \u201cWe believe the future is electric,\u201d said Roger Nielsen, president and CEO of Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA), the largest maker of Class 6 to 8 trucks in the U.S., in his keynote address. \u201cIt\u2019s the beginning of the post-internal combustion engine era for commercial vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

This declaration was echoed on stage by the likes of Jay Craig, CEO of Fortune 500 parts-maker Meritor; Peter Voorhoeve, Volvo Trucks North America CEO; and Ike Brown, co-owner of logistics provider NFI, which runs 4,000 tractors.<\/p>\n

Okay, let\u2019s take a deep breath. Anytime you\u2019re in a room full of evangelists and first adopters the market can appear a little skewed. At ACT Expo, however, no one was Pollyanna: \u201cLet\u2019s remain sober, there is no business case (for electric trucks) today,\u201d said Nielsen and many others.<\/p>\n

Nielsen went on to talk about the tipping points to electric truck viability: Battery costs must be cut in half while energy density must double; batteries must be proven durable for second and third owners; and infrastructure buildout is an essential yet arduous process.<\/p>\n

This measured view of the development of the EV market contrasts with the last generation of electric vehicle makers. Who remembers Coda Automotive, Smith Electric, and Boulder Electric Vehicle? They never failed to insist, brazenly, \u201cI can give you a positive TCO (total cost of ownership) today!\u201d and \u201cJust wait until we scale, in two years.\u201d Always two years.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s ACT Expo was a transformative year for electrification. Since then, electric trucks from Freightliner, Volvo, and Peterbilt are now in customer\u2019s hands. Fuso has deployed more eCanters. Mack will put an electric refuse model on the road in a few months.<\/p>\n

At this year\u2019s event, Penske Truck Leasing unveiled via live video the first commercial heavy-duty electric vehicle charging station in La Mirada, Calif. Daimler\u2019s Portland plant is undergoing a massive retool to build electric Freightliner trucks.<\/p>\n

That said, those deployments are still only part of electric trucks\u2019 pre-commercialization test phase. \u201cIt\u2019s just not in the dialogue that we\u2019ll put (fleets) in an electric truck next month,\u201d said Paul Rosa of Penske Truck Leasing.<\/p>\n

Yet market dynamics outside of product development are requiring more urgent attention.<\/p>\n

Urban jurisdictions are starting conversations around congestion charging, creating \u201cgreen zones\u201d in cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Pasadena, Calif., and requiring zero-emissions vehicles in public fleets \u2014 while outright bans on internal combustion engines in global cities are already in place.<\/p>\n

When the statistic is widely disseminated that two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportation, and when former U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn calls the Long Beach port corridor a \u201cdiesel death zone,\u201d you can hear the drumbeat to ban diesel getting louder.<\/p>\n

If these mandates become reality before the viability of electrification, will fleet operators be forced to comply using technology that is on its way out? The waning lack of support for CNG infrastructure today would\u2019ve made any CNG evangelist in 2012 think twice about adoption.<\/p>\n

The natural gas market wouldn\u2019t exist without incentives, and neither will the electric truck market, at least for a while. Even still, there are tangible, startling costs to alt-fuel or alt-power adoption. NFI\u2019s Brown said the company invested in first-generation LNG technology. \u201cIt was a disaster,\u201d he said, a financial disaster to be sure.<\/p>\n

Unlike that time of agnosticism, the electrification path is now all but secured, or so we\u2019re told. Yet the transition could produce more economic pain than we had imagined.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Author<\/h4>\n
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\"Chris<\/a>Chris Brown<\/a><\/h5>\n

Executive Editor<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chris is the executive editor of Business Fleet Magazine and Auto Rental News. He covers all aspects of the fleet world.<\/p>\n

View Bio<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/www.businessfleet.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"JMF\"I\u00b4m\u00a0a Fleet Management expert, and the manager of\u00a0Advanced Fleet Management Consulting<\/a><\/strong>, that provides Fleet Management Consultancy Services.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Advanced Fleet Management Consulting, en colaboraci\u00f3n con Jaltest, GantaBI, Optimatics y Transporte Profesional, organizan el \u201cCurso para la Gesti\u00f3n de flotas de veh\u00edculos\u201d con el fin de formar a los profesionales en gesti\u00f3n de flotas a tomar una visi\u00f3n global y conocer todas las actividades y factores clave involucrados en la gesti\u00f3n de una flota de veh\u00edculos. El curso es \u00fanico en Espa\u00f1a y presenta un enfoque innovador al desarrollar una metodolog\u00eda propia para la gesti\u00f3n de flotas de veh\u00edculos.<\/p>\n

Pincha en el siguiente enlace para saber m\u00e1s:<\/p>\n

18\u00ba CURSO PARA LA GESTI\u00d3N DE FLOTAS DE VEH\u00cdCULOS-Barcelona 9-10-11 de Octubre 2019<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By all accounts, the electric truck market is “pre-commercialization,” with models in testing by almost all major truck makers and some upstart independents.\u00a0Fuso’s all-electric eCanter, seen here at the 2019 ACT Expo in Long Beach, hit production in the UK in early 2018 and has already deployed 100 vehicles in Europe, Japan, and most recently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedfleetmanagementconsulting.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}