How do I transition to an Electric fleet?
James: If I am an SME entering this space, I´m worried about if these vehicles go far enough for what I use them for? Do I have to worry about stopping in the middle of the day for them to charge for hours? Or is there a plan that I can implement that means I cover all of my charging and infrastructure requirements?
Mark: So I think range anxiety is a thing for car drivers and van drivers.
Changing the technology of driving a vehicle is new, and people are focusing on the range of battery and range of an electric vehicle. Charging anxiety is something that I think as an industry we've gone through, and now range anxiety is much more focused.
Commercial vehicles like cars, like any form of technology, are getting better over time so we're starting to see commercial vehicles with typically 200 plus miles in their battery ranges.
So it's always about what's fit for purpose.
Understanding what vehicles do on a daily basis.
This works out what type of vans can change today, and what types of vans you may need to do a bit more work first:
Where do we charge during the day?
Are there places to charge during the day?
Is a van going to another depot,
Does that have charging there that can charge whilst the driver of that van is working?
If you're last mile delivery, where it's constant stop start, stop start, - then how often is the van moving, and when can it charge?
Understanding the vehicle's actual movements and the vehicle's resting space is critical
I'll throw a stat at you - the average downtime of a vehicle (cars and vans) is 85% of its life.
Now, vans naturally drive a lot more than cars do, but we have to accept that most vehicles are doing nothing for a significant proportion of their time, and most vehicles overnight are doing less. So commercial vehicles are charging overnight; having a full tank of 'fuel' at the start of every day, going on doing their day...
Understanding the vehicle and using data to understand the day-to-day journey is critical, - can a vehicle do a full day without needing to charge?
If it can, that's a great starting point to transitioning from an ICE vehicle into an electric vehicle.