Insider's Guide to Energy
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Insider's Guide to Energy
32. Mastering Fleet Electrification: Insider Strategies for Optimizing the EV Transition in Logistics and Transit
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In this episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV Series, host Chris Sass, co-host Niall Riddell, and guest Daniel Hilson, CEO and Founder of EVenergi and BetterFleet, dive into the complexities of transitioning large fleets to electric vehicles (EVs). Daniel shares his insights on planning, optimization, and the management tools necessary for successful decarbonization in sectors like transit, logistics, and school bus fleets. They discuss the challenges and solutions associated with electrifying mission-critical fleets, emphasizing the importance of digital twin technology and scenario planning to navigate the evolving landscape of EV infrastructure.
The conversation explores the intricate relationship between energy and mobility, particularly focusing on complex fleet operations. Daniel highlights the need for tailored solutions for different fleet types, from public transport to refuse collection, and the role of regulatory frameworks in accelerating the transition. The discussion also touches on the practical challenges of grid capacity, load management, and the importance of having a flexible, automated planning process that can adapt to changing technologies and regulations.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the real-world application of EV transition strategies, supported by case studies from around the globe, including the work done in Australia, Wales, and the U.S. This episode is a must-listen for energy leaders, fleet managers, and anyone interested in the future of sustainable transport.
We were pleased to host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhilson/
Visit our website: https://insidersguidetoenergy.com/
Transcript
00:00:00 Daniel Hilson
The transition of complex fleets in municipalities, logistics, utilities and school bus fleets will be incredibly difficult without appropriate planning, optimization and management tools.
00:00:12 Daniel Hilson
We talk about in this podcast how you can apply some of these tools to accelerate the decarbonization of transport.
00:00:22 Chris Sass
Your trusted source for information on the energy transition. This is the insider's guide to Energy podcast.
00:00:35 Chris Sass
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00:01:02 Chris Sass
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00:01:37 Chris Sass
Welcome to another edition of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series. I'm your host, Chris Sass, with me as co-host Nia.l Riddell. Niall, what's gonna happen today on this episode?
00:01:46 Niall Riddell
So today we're going to dive a little bit into how you plan, manage and optimise the transition to electric vehicles. So it's quite exciting that we've got Dan Hilson, who I met a number of years ago from energy or better fleet with us today to talk to us about that transition planning. Hey, Dan, do you want to introduce yourself?
00:02:05 Daniel Hilson
Sure. Yeah, my name's Dan Hilson. I'm sale and founder of “EVenergi” and BetterFleet. And as Neiallsaid, we're focused on the planning, optimization and management of emission fleets. I've been in the industry about 20 years through clean tech, large and small companies and really excited to be here. Thank you.
00:02:25 Niall Riddell
And we're going to dive into a number of different vehicle types, a number of different use cases and a number of different scenarios. But do you want to give us a real quick intro? How did this journey begin for you and what is it that we're really trying to solve for today?
00:02:39 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, I guess. I mean ultimately I was very passionate about, you know, clean tech, cleaning up the economy, working through lots of different areas of, you know, microgrids and sustainable, you know, decentralised energy solutions and ended up really seeing that this was a big emerging problem. This was about, you know, 10 years ago or so and.
00:02:59 Daniel Hilson
You know, really that Nexus of energy and mobility wasn't being really well explored. So I really started to explore it as a sort of launched a business really around the around that Nexus and pretty quickly realise that fleets.
00:03:13 Daniel Hilson
Where where a lot of the exciting you know traction was going to happen, but a lot of the really complicated problems and obviously problems are always great for businesses to solve. So we went out about, you know trying to solve those problems, talking hundreds of fleet managers and sustainability managers in multiple industries to, you know see where we could be, you know helpful in.
00:03:33 Daniel Hilson
Really accelerating that transition.
00:03:35 Niall Riddell
A Nexus between energy and mobility seems to like synthesise so many problems in the world today. You know, do you do you narrow that down slightly? Is there a specific user group you're going after, and what do you do to help them on that transition?
00:03:51 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. Look, as of today, we've really focused on complex fleets. So you know transit, municipalities, utilities, logistics, school buses.
00:04:00 Daniel Hilson
You know, these people have really complicated needs, mission critical duty cycles. They have to deliver. They're pretty overwhelmed by the journey. You know, they're people who really haven't had the duty to electrify the idea of charges. And, you know, electrical infrastructure wasn't a thing for them. So really, that kind of mission.
00:04:20 Daniel Hilson
Critical fleet is where we focus most of our attention as opposed to, say, you know, an office wants to install a couple of charges up the front. That's not really our our segment. It's really people who have those kind of really complex use cases.
00:04:34 Niall Riddell
And and within those sort of complex fleets, I can imagine you've got everything from street sweep through to refuse collection through to bus through to truck light van car. You got a little bit of everything. Is there a common thread that runs through this journey? What is it that unites that group of complex fleets?
00:04:54 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. Look, I mean generally it's about, you know, electrification of depots at scale. So these sort of fleets generally have, you know, a large scale depot. They have dispatch and parking and people coming and going and someone needs a vehicle available at a particular time. Not like whenever often it's, you know, complex.
00:05:14 Daniel Hilson
In terms of load management and you know how you're gonna actually, you know, distribute the load between those vehicles, not just in a I plug in and I get an equal share, but how does?
00:05:23 Daniel Hilson
That'll that'll work. So yeah, there's real similarities there and and yeah, really across that group, you've also got professional fleet managers, people whose job it is is to deliver customer service, right, a customer outcome to their to their drivers, you know, and to the public. You know, you've got the transit delivering day-to-day, you know, people to.
00:05:43 Daniel Hilson
To do their job and they run the economy in many ways. You know, you've got people who are picking up the garbage or, you know, sweeping the streets. If they don't do what they do that day, things are really impacted, you know, as opposed to if, yeah, often. Obviously, people drive into work is important, but you're not gonna have, you know, civil unrest if someone doesn't get to.
00:06:02 Daniel Hilson
Work one day.
00:06:04 Niall Riddell
So this means that you've got like this blend between the energy transition. They're moving from a liquid fuel to an electric fuel. You've got some municipalities, you're conventionally quite slow, but also being driven quite hard by regulation mixed with emerging technology change management, that whole equation.
00:06:24 Niall Riddell
What do you do for the customer? How do you help them with that? What is basically sounds like a bit of a mess for a big business or a big complex business.
00:06:33 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, maybe making I can use some case studies, I guess. I mean, you know, if you think about we were from Australia originally, I mean we've expanded to Europe and to North America, but you know in Australia, our largest initial client was probably well the ACT government was the 1st and moved very early. But then transport for NSW. So from the point in time that the Minister.
00:06:51 Daniel Hilson
Stands up and says hey, by 20-30 everything's gonna be electric or hydrogen or whatever they.
00:06:56 Daniel Hilson
The side, you know, that sort of flows down into as you mentioned like all the people who actually have to activate, you know, and we often say like we try to meet in the middle between that sustainability, aspiration and the operational reality. So for us it's all about. OK, let's get it a really clear operational reality. Our digital twin technology, our planning software.
00:07:16 Daniel Hilson
Is essentially used to create that shared understanding. We have like an asset management module that says what assets have you got, when are they going?
00:07:24 Daniel Hilson
To transition when's?
00:07:25 Daniel Hilson
Their useful life going to be over and is there a vehicle that will be available to replace that particular asset at that time and our digital twin says, well, here's a geography. Here's the climb.
00:07:35 Daniel Hilson
Here's regenerative braking. Here's everything to do with the physics of the vehicle. The physics of charging, you know, will their vehicle be able to do that task, or how do you optimize that? So it's about baselining. What's there looking at the emerging technologies being able to scenario plan like all our software is really in the planning side about scenario planning like what are your alternatives and?
00:07:55 Daniel Hilson
What happens economically, operationally, you know, from a sustainability perspective, if you mix and match those alternatives, what's the right mix?
00:08:05 Chris Sass
How often do you find that that you can't help someone get electrified today? How? How? How many fleets are ready? I mean, you know, I think when we talked initially, perhaps to say a trash fleet in New York City, that they have multiple roles, they pick up trash, they plow snow or something of that nature. Are those fleets ready, other vehicles already in pipeline?
00:08:24 Chris Sass
To handle that kind of utilitarian use.
00:08:29 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. Look, I mean, people like us navigate the market through who's ready. And so trans has been a huge player in people where the vehicles are available the, you know, the the government incentives are there. The willingness is there. It's just a beautiful use case for public transport is fantastic. Anyway, you electrify public transport. You have so many users who inhale.
00:08:49 Daniel Hilson
Diesel fumes, you know, school buses are the same. This is a great end to end story. So a lot of focus has been there, but then you know when you know and and also with those like when we worked with the Welsh.
00:09:00 Daniel Hilson
It was really tough. They got difficult topography. They're looking at hydrogen versus electric. So in some of those use cases, it's a it's a toss up, but you do get them to work, you know, as you mentioned, there's some where it's snowing, you know, for example, you've got snow plowing on the same vehicles that do trash and yeah, the duty cycles.
00:09:20 Daniel Hilson
Just won't get there in the snow. You know, there's two.
00:09:22 Daniel Hilson
Heavy. You know the degradation of the battery. I mean, sorry. The state of charge of the battery degrades too quickly and you need to look at changing that plea. I mean, if you believe that we need to transform as an economy, then we also need to look at the fleet and how it's working. And with newer, newer technologies like autonomous vehicles or, you know or.
00:09:42 Daniel Hilson
You know, you know, a lot of these other technologies that are emerging like can you restructure that fleet? I'm a firm believer that you have to transform because we have to get there from an environmental perspective.
00:09:54 Niall Riddell
So I'm going to grab a chance to talk about the Welsh because I I like to talk about the Welsh, but even more interestingly, you, you, you you inferred. There's a debate between electric and hydrogen and clearly there is a lot of discussion around where both of these technologies play in the transport ecosystem. Can you tell us a bit more about that experience of reviewing and assessing the complexities of moving between either an electrified?
00:10:15 Niall Riddell
Just a more hydrogen based system.
00:10:18 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. Look, I mean, because we have a planning tool, we do have a charge management system. So you know we do both and we want to develop something for hydrogen in the future. You know, we are agnostic when we go in and we do our planning with for a fleet. You know we just want to get the best outcome. And so for the world and for lots of others you know S Australian government, you know there was some preconceived ideas.
00:10:39 Daniel Hilson
Possible kind of solutions and.
00:10:42 Daniel Hilson
You know, but it is a very complicated.
00:10:44 Daniel Hilson
Created.
00:10:45 Daniel Hilson
Complicated debate. I mean, there's obviously the vehicles, there's the cost of the vehicles, there's the efficiency of the actual, you know, productivity of converting that fuel into you know, propulsion is a big sort of question and obviously hydrogen has a lot of challenges in that area in terms of converting it from 1:00 to the other. But then you also have the supply chain.
00:11:05 Daniel Hilson
And I think the supply chain is one of the biggest, not just to get it there like lots of people think of supply chain and they're like, how do we get it into the Welsh fleet from somewhere.
00:11:14 Daniel Hilson
But there's a bigger issue for me is like, what's the better use of that green hydrogen? Because there's not a lot of it. But there's a lot of demand. So you've got shipping, you've got error. You know you've.
00:11:25 Daniel Hilson
Got you know.
00:11:27 Daniel Hilson
Air transportation. You've got all sorts of different competing demands, including putting it into the grid. And so for me, the the challenge with transport.
00:11:34 Daniel Hilson
And we've really looked at it end to end for a government, for a nation, what have you.
00:11:39 Daniel Hilson
Is is that the best use and I struggled personally to see that as the best use which really means that the competition for that will push the prices up beyond what you know can be afforded because you know a shipping line might have a 20 year contract taking all that hydrogen, it just won't leave a lot. So that's kind of a big challenge that I see.
00:12:00 Niall Riddell
And within that hydrogen debate, we you mentioned briefly, green hydrogen, can you tell us a little bit about the differing green, blue, brown, grey, other types of hydrogen, so we can put that in context of what it means?
00:12:13 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. It just really comes down to the, you know, how are you generating that hydrogen? And so how green is it really like what is the content from an emissions perspective, you know, particularly sort of scope to emissions into that hydrogen.
00:12:26 Chris Sass
We jumped right into the conversation and we've gone into the detail, so help me understand better what it is you do when you engage with with, let's say, municipality or you know I want to. I want to electrify my school buses or whatever. How how's
00:12:40 Chris Sass
The.
00:12:40 Chris Sass
Engagement work and where do you come in? At what point?
00:12:42
Sure.
00:12:44 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, you know, we've got 2 channels to market. So on the one hand, we have a charge management and and planning software that a channel can buy. So if you're, you know if you're Abd or if you're a electrical installer, you might just install our charge management software and we don't really directly engaged and we've got people like acom and lots of channel partners globally that use our software.
00:13:05 Daniel Hilson
So that's sort.
00:13:05 Daniel Hilson
Of the one.
00:13:06 Daniel Hilson
Which is we support people who service a customer. We have a, you know, a solutions group that will go in and actually directly service a customer in some cases. And we have some very large customers like, you know, King County Metro or Toronto Transit or, you know, some of these others that, yeah, they need that additional support. And so in that case.
00:13:25 Daniel Hilson
We will actually go in and you know we can do everything from the start of the journey. We can go in and do fleet engagement and consulting, help them to set up for the transition. We can use our software, but also support them through, hey, you know, how do I procure a vehicle and what what's the upcoming technology and we publish reports and we help them navigate that space.
00:13:44 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. Help them with things like fleet productivity, a lot of missing piece here is do you have the right fleet? So they go into this transition with the idea that they're going to electrify their existing fleet, but actually they've got 50 vehicles too many. That's a really poor start, you know, starting point because you're actually electrifying or, you know, decarbonizing the wrong thing. So we have sort of a team of automotive experts and.
00:14:06 Daniel Hilson
You know, sustainability consultants and they really help us to do 2 things. One is to, you know, provide that solution and to end.
00:14:13 Daniel Hilson
And the other is to inform our product development. So it's great to be engaging with customers to understand their needs first hand to feed into our product. So we know we're developing things that are really addressing pain points of the customers.
00:14:28 Niall Riddell
And as you therefore gather data, gather insights, you must be able to start to build your digital twins you described. But with these really complex and multivariate problems, how do you decide what to optimize for? Is it a story of optimizing for carbon, a story of optimizing for cost? What are the drivers that you're really trying to optimize and solve?
00:14:48 Niall Riddell
For.
00:14:50 Daniel Hilson
Look, it's really up to the client, so if you've got someone who says, you know, our our mayor is so keen to transition, it just doesn't matter what the cost is or someone saying, look, we've got a grant from the FDA in America like really like we've got the money, it's not the question of of cost, that's one optimization. If you've got someone as an operator in London.
00:15:09 Daniel Hilson
Like your clients like, go ahead of ours or or others and they're saying, look, you know, we have to compete for this. We just have to figure out how to.
00:15:16 Daniel Hilson
Do this and the most cost efficient.
00:15:18 Daniel Hilson
A and that's a different optimization. So for us it's really working with the client and we can tweak our engine to say, hey, look, are we optimizing here for carbon or cost or even operational efficiency. I mean, in general, operational efficiency is generally number.
00:15:32
One right if.
00:15:33 Daniel Hilson
You can't deliver passengers to the City of London.
00:15:37 Daniel Hilson
You know you're gonna.
00:15:38 Daniel Hilson
You're not going to win any battles as the mayor, right? So if it gets stuck on that, then it'll usually. I mean, what do they say the the, the mayor?
00:15:46 Daniel Hilson
And you're, you know, is hide and fight on plowing the snow, you know, like, it's it's that kind of, you know, problem statement. So you know there's these really hard lines about operational efficiency. That's the bottom line. And then on top of that you optimize for carbon for cost, for vehicle availability, right. Again, there's some hard constraints like if there's just not a vehicle available.
00:16:07 Daniel Hilson
You know, and we've.
00:16:09 Daniel Hilson
I'll stop there. Probably other questions so.
00:16:11 Chris Sass
Well, I I hear the constraints and one that you haven't mentioned is the utility or the capacity.
00:16:18 Chris Sass
So is is that generally not something that's coming up in your day-to-day? I mean, you mentioned a bunch of them, but that has yet to come up in the free conversation we've had so far.
00:16:28 Daniel Hilson
Ohh look, that's a massive 1. Sorry if I haven't stated it. It's not because it was just because I didn't get to it. It's an enormous 1.
00:16:33 Daniel Hilson
Like in this.
00:16:33 Daniel Hilson
In America at the moment, you know getting sites.
00:16:37 Daniel Hilson
Power is absolutely a constraint to accelerating the transition. It's a huge constraint. It's a problem people are working on all.
00:16:44 Daniel Hilson
The.
00:16:44 Daniel Hilson
Time to the degree of like at some point people will move depots towards power. You know it's that much of A constraint that you'll actually have a, a, a shift in how you know, we organize our actual.
00:16:57 Daniel Hilson
Transportation industry if in areas where it's that much of a driver to decarbonize, like we're saying we have to.
00:17:03 Daniel Hilson
Decarbonise, we need.
00:17:04 Daniel Hilson
To do it by the state, like California for example, they will start to be a reshuffling of of some of these elements. So yeah, we do a lot of load, you know, load management in our products both in.
00:17:15 Daniel Hilson
Planning and optimization and yeah, we have examples where.
00:17:19 Daniel Hilson
A government's gone to a private operator and said, hey, you need to put 10 vehicles on that site and it could only fit 3. So we have to plan and now we're managing effectively 10 vehicles on three charges. It's that sort of dynamic. You know the things we need to do with charge management to to solve for that problem.
00:17:37 Daniel Hilson
So it's a huge part of what we do in terms of both load modeling, load management. There's some really interesting strategies like dynamic envelopes where utilities are saying, hey, you know, if you can manage load in particular times and commit to that, we'll give you a, you know, a break in the in the upgrade upfront, there's all sorts of things that we're involved with that are trying to solve for that.
00:17:58 Daniel Hilson
Enormous prop.
00:17:59 Chris Sass
Have you come across? I know when we worked in New York, there was a company that had these basically trucks that were batteries that they they would go to depot. They were designed for fleets.
00:18:08 Chris Sass
Is that a solution that you're seeing in the wild that are people bringing in fleet size batteries to do charging? Like I said, I know we've interviewed them on the podcast, but are are you?
00:18:17 Chris Sass
Seeing it in your day-to-day planning.
00:18:19 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, definitely. I mean we have mobile units in a lot of transit, whether it's for disaster recovery. I mean, look, a couple of those charges stop working. You know, you have to have. So it's it's been.
00:18:28 Daniel Hilson
Used in the wild? Absolutely. I think one of the themes that I would generally talk about and think is very important is not to have point solutions, not to go ohh. This works once, so let's do it. You know, we need to have solutions that hey, for for, you know, waste removal. This is the solution you're going to need two of these that come and you know there's a problem with the charger.
00:18:50 Daniel Hilson
Come on round. But there is a trend that transition where you have a yard and you say look for a year. We need a mobile storage unit or we need you know we need to put a massive generator on site which is not great for the environment but it will carry us through the next couple of years to get decarbonize.
00:19:07 Daniel Hilson
So there is this sort of balance between, hey, this is the solution, but we need some standard solutions for that two year period where we're bridging to grid availability and there's loads of that happening in the states right now. You know big projects that are having bridging solutions for a couple of years, you know with large scale battery storage and which is movable you know they'll use that for two years.
00:19:28 Daniel Hilson
Move it to another site where they're then going to, you know, use it again.
00:19:32 Chris Sass
And is the regulation staying in touch with that with those bridging solutions? Are they allowing for those kind of solutions you know can I put on a huge diesel generator in with my electric fleet of school buses if if that was what I need? Is the regulation going to allow me to do that?
00:19:47 Daniel Hilson
Well, obviously regulations very different and not uniform globally. I think you know intelligent regulation would see that as a decarbonisation overall. What's the impact against business as usual? So again like what's the baseline and then what are we doing here and how does that help? Yeah, there's no question that there's no government that would cut a ribbon.
00:20:07 Daniel Hilson
With the diesel generator sitting out the back, right, that's not a good.
00:20:10 Daniel Hilson
It's not a good it's not a.
00:20:12 Daniel Hilson
Good.
00:20:12 Daniel Hilson
Outcome, but at the same time, you know, practically speaking, as a person who cares about decarbonization, if that is an important bridge that will get you there and you can show over 20 years, there's like a 90% reduction in CO2, yeah, then that's a good that's a good outcome.
00:20:29 Niall Riddell
So so I've heard this theory that you briefly mentioned there about moving your actual depot, your actual physical location to where the power is before. And I've heard it often presented as a theory. Have you actually seen that in, you know, practical real life or is that something that is perhaps just hypothesis at this stage?
00:20:50 Daniel Hilson
Look, there's a there's a lot of shared fleet charging infrastructure concepts emerging and so they are being built and it's really a case of industry or government saying let's just put you know a big charging depot here and we think there's going to be a lot of fleet demand for it, so.
00:21:11 Daniel Hilson
It's more happening in the context.
00:21:13 Daniel Hilson
Of semi private public charging. So what would have been called a big public charging station being now positioned as a fleet shared charging infrastructure station. So that's definitely happening. I mean when we've done big studies like for you know whole of government you know transit systems around the world.
00:21:32 Daniel Hilson
You do look at it and you go well. Are these depots positioned in the right place? We've done studies, for example, for investment banks who are looking at approaching governments and saying, hey, look, your depots are in one space, we're going to buy a bunch of land, put them in the right space.
00:21:48 Daniel Hilson
And that's really, you know, happening in in lots of countries. So there is this sort of meeting of.
00:21:55 Daniel Hilson
Large scale master planning and we do a lot of master planning. We have a product called Good fleet that does master planning itself where we can say like where should infrastructure go meeting again with the operational reality of hey, we can't move that depot because it's just been there for 50 years. It's got too much other infrastructure.
00:22:11 Daniel Hilson
So.
00:22:12 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, you're kind of balancing those things.
00:22:15 Niall Riddell
We in the UK are classic Brits. We grumble about a few things and one of the things we grumble about is not having an institutional strategy. Do you see quite a big variation between the continents that you're operating on in terms of the strategy that's being deployed, the the speed at which they're the various municipalities are addressing the challenges or do you see it?
00:22:35 Niall Riddell
Fairly consistent.
00:22:38 Daniel Hilson
I think it's much more localised and regional, so if you think about London buses, you know this strategy there, they've got targets. They're moving towards it. They're collaborating with operators. I mean the operators under might grumble, you know, they're on grumbles in the UK, but as you say, but. But yeah, there is there is and and the Welsh Government, as I said, strategy this yeah Scotland.
00:22:42 Niall Riddell
Yeah.
00:22:57 Daniel Hilson
Target strategy and so there. This levels and pockets of cities. I mean California has a strategy you know which other other states are following that that are kind of believe in that strategy. They've got regulation in place, they've really kind of.
00:23:13 Daniel Hilson
You know, and again, a lot of this is about how holistic they are. Have they thought about the planning all the way through the implementation? Is there incentive regime supportive of those sorts of things and and creating the right behaviours? Is it short term or long term?
00:23:26 Daniel Hilson
So.
00:23:27 Daniel Hilson
I'd say there are strategies in place around the world. You know, Australia has a strategy which is really.
00:23:34 Daniel Hilson
You know, really integrated the NSW government big sort of client and you know fantastic leader in the market. They've got a good strong strategy ACC government years ago 2017.
00:23:47 Daniel Hilson
You know, they wanted a strategy before almost anyone. So yeah, it's really pockets, you know, and it would be great to have national strategies. Sometimes they do, sometimes they.
00:23:55 Daniel Hilson
Don't.
00:23:56 Niall Riddell
So we're seeing pockets of regional differentiation, regional growth, regional, you know leadership. Do you see the same thing within the vehicle classes or perhaps even the use types of vehicle?
00:24:07 Niall Riddell
Buses. So do you see buses as being significantly ahead of refuse trucks, for example?
00:24:14 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, absolutely. I mean there's, there's, you know, transit is definitely moving fast. I mean, municipalities have strong mandates and they're they're just trying to find vehicles often and and they have big passenger fleets, right, and we help them with those passenger fleets that still have, you know, their own challenges around load management and.
00:24:33 Daniel Hilson
Other things so and obviously you know, obviously there's there's.
00:24:37 Daniel Hilson
You know commercial.
00:24:38 Daniel Hilson
Delivery fleets last mile delivery is moving quickly. The UK, there's very strong mandates. I mean Tesco is a global leader in many ways in that segment. Yeah, Amazon. You know, Amazon wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't economic. They have such scale. You know, they've almost purchased a once they purchase, but they're a huge investor in rivian, right. And they're getting it to happen through.
00:24:58 Daniel Hilson
Brute force of like having that interest and understanding it deeply.
00:25:03 Daniel Hilson
So that's moving very quickly. You know, there's a lot of markets that that are you know behind and trying to move, but Drage in the US for example, there's really strong policy incentive on drainage in the US, it's hugely polluting. It's very concentrated in disadvantaged areas. So again, there's these pockets of let's move it forward and the policy does proceed.
00:25:25 Daniel Hilson
Manufacturers saying, hey, lots of incentives, you know, good structure, some carrots, some sticks. Let's go and build some vehicles. So there's part of it's the vehicles and then there's part of it is the actual, you know, structure of the incentives that drive vehicle delivery.
00:25:42 Chris Sass
How much nuances there to these vehicles? I mean, if you're talking to dredge, you're talking just very short, maybe around, you know, port of Long Beach or something like that. You're not driving across country.
00:25:52 Chris Sass
For planning purposes, how much institutional knowledge does your team need or when you're building these models up? Because I'd imagine that's very different than a bus fleet or fire engines or some other fleet.
00:26:05 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, it's interesting because years ago, I remember I had this hypothesis that there'd be all these startups in China and around the world that would be like, hey, I'm just gonna do the fire engine and I'm just gonna do the, you know, and that they'd explode. Just do that one use case. And doing it really well into it. It seemed to make sense. It hasn't really played out so far and you find.
00:26:23 Daniel Hilson
A lot of the big guys are moving from use case to use case and they're I'd, I'd say the way to look at it is it's a system, right? Like the difference between having somewhere you can feel on the road and having charges potentially with someone, right, charging much more complicated to.
00:26:38 Daniel Hilson
Match and a mobile battery that has to integrate into the grid. That's the system. And so when you look at what's going to happen with refuse and waste, people will work out that system and they'll present the best option for that system. And I'll say, right, this is how this would work end to end, maybe it's like 4 hydrogen vehicles and 20 electric. And here's how you do the dispenser.
00:26:58 Daniel Hilson
And here's how you do the electric and.
00:27:00 Daniel Hilson
That's what gives you the coverage from a disaster recovery perspective and hey, you need a battery. And so from my perspective, the people that figure that system out end to end and it is different for different use cases. But again like mission critical will need resilience. And so there'll be similar systems for a police fleet or a or a, you know, a fire.
00:27:20 Daniel Hilson
There'll be there'll be systems that emerge. So you know, I do think there's a combination of similarities, but then needing that end to end, you know, system syncing to how to make those different use cases.
00:27:33 Niall Riddell
And and to build up that view on the system, clearly you need quite a lot of data. What are your kind of go to data sources? Is it all based around telematics? Are you basing it around historical fuel purchases? What's the thing you use to start understanding the transition and really put numbers behind the the thesis?
00:27:53 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. So one of the kind of there's some baseline things that exist like topography and you know that exists in lots of form. So you know, what is the kind of spatial landscape whether that's through Google APIs or other things that's accessible in lots of different ways. Then you've got climate, which is sort of a build on top of that. And then you've got the grid like, where's the grid? And then you've got.
00:28:13 Daniel Hilson
Whereas on right infrastructure, so our models kind of build in all of these layers. And then obviously you've got the physics of the vehicles, the physics of the charges which you have manufacturers provide if you have like we are, we're starting to get.
00:28:28 Daniel Hilson
More color on the actual data from our.
00:28:30 Daniel Hilson
Charge management system.
00:28:31 Daniel Hilson
And where we can use it, we can't always have private operators, but we've got a transit system that's that's willing to share it. We can get some, you know, color in terms of the vehicle actual behaviors. So it's sort of a combination.
00:28:43 Daniel Hilson
Of.
00:28:44 Daniel Hilson
The digital twin emulating things, you know whether that's.
00:28:48 Daniel Hilson
Emulating the charger or the vehicle or the battery degradation, you know there's lots of physics models that can show how battery will degrade or air conditioning systems, which is a huge thing. You know a huge impact on on the you know, ability for something to meet a range. You know, what is the actual.
00:29:07 Daniel Hilson
What is the actual efficiency based on the climate and the air conditioner?
00:29:10 Daniel Hilson
So yeah, it's partially passed, you know, passenger loading is a big one. All of these things impact. So we have these models which take the physics of these things and then basically apply the real data. And exciting part is now the real data is becoming available. We're seeing what actually happens, right. That's a whole nother conversation. What is actually happening is, you know, is is really interesting.
00:29:31 Niall Riddell
And therefore you end up with a a model for a single site and a single piece of the transition. How do you start looking beyond one depot to maybe enable people to, you know, local authorities often have one or two depots? How do they, you know, model the Second Depot or enable another party like the the fire, the police to visit one depot and share those assets?
00:29:52 Niall Riddell
Is that something that goes into your thinking as you build out that system?
00:29:57 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. So we still got.
00:29:59 Daniel Hilson
Two, we've actually got 3 views on it, so we've got Gridley, which is a whole of network view and that can be used by utilities or governments to think about where all those depots are. And then we've got better fleet, which is our core product and actually how we brand in the US and essentially that product is essentially looking at, you know, at the depot.
00:30:17 Daniel Hilson
You in the depot modelling, but also like we can combine those so we can look across.
00:30:21 Daniel Hilson
Suppose and for planning. For example, we can say hey, that bus is also going to charge on rail like what does that do to?
00:30:27 Daniel Hilson
The need in.
00:30:27 Daniel Hilson
The depot so we can sort of extrapolate those different layers and yeah, we have clients that have 1000 depots.
00:30:35 Daniel Hilson
Like New South.
00:30:35 Daniel Hilson
Wales government. Yeah, we can do a much more high level view of what happens if all those assets transition.
00:30:42 Daniel Hilson
I mean, I'll give you a good example of that. So taking you know, Department of Education taking their time.
00:30:47 Daniel Hilson
Next data and looking at OK, well, where do you need to charge? Where are all the schools? You know, where can you opportunistically charge and then what's the cost difference if you did that opportunistically rather than try to do it all overnight? And I mean, in some cases, we've saved 10 or $12 million in figuring out how to opportunistically charge rather than loading up depots.
00:31:08 Daniel Hilson
Increasing the infrastructure of all these individual depots, so it's a very important question and and opportunity for efficiency.
00:31:16 Niall Riddell
And and with that follows the fact that you've now got a data set which could almost dictate at a societal level where we need to build infrastructure. So you're almost doing like, you know, like you described it, you're doing system level planning to enable in time you just qualities, towns, regions to look at their electrification strategy.
00:31:36 Niall Riddell
This is super exciting because we need to move big chunks towards that direction of travel. You know what would be your single biggest case study of work you've done so far and how are you starting to see the results of your analysis come to life?
00:31:53 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. So we started that out working with utilities in Australia, like Ausgrid and some of the large utilities. And then eventually we got appointed to do what's called national map. So for the federal government, actually, we did it for NSW Government 1st and that was adopted as a national standard in Australia. So we actually mapped the whole of Australia by traffic volumes, heavy vehicle flows.
00:32:12 Daniel Hilson
Topography adoption, like what were the adoption curves and really so did hotspots like where would these charging infrastructures need to be?
00:32:21 Daniel Hilson
Which is kind of top down, right? So it's never going to be perfect, but we then did that for Michigan and we've done that in Wales. And so we've started to take that methodology elsewhere. But then now what we're getting to is a bottom up build of that. So like OK, we've done that high level. Now we're actually getting particularly from fleets and real data about where they are and what they're doing and there's some initiatives we're launching now are about.
00:32:42 Daniel Hilson
How do we combine that top down view which does have some real data? It's not like it's all extrapolated, but with now bottom up view of things really happening.
00:32:50 Daniel Hilson
You know, we know where things are happening. How do we basically look at that? Yeah. And we do have a temporal view of that as well in terms of, you know, if you look at, if you go to NSW Masterplan and Google that, it'll show you like we work out as adoption happens as batteries get better as range gets better. Like what does that look like into the future in terms of the?
00:33:10 Daniel Hilson
Heat and it really does change over time as well.
00:33:15 Chris Sass
How dramatic is that change going to be? If you're buying assets like these trucks or if you're doing heavy equipment, those are long term assets, right? They're not like maybe a van fleet or a car fleet. I'd imagine you change more often.
00:33:27 Chris Sass
Than some of these heavy assets.
00:33:29 Chris Sass
So how hard is that to have a crystal ball and predict?
00:33:32 Chris Sass
For the business owner.
00:33:34 Daniel Hilson
Yeah, it is. It's super difficult. I mean, you need to be able to.
00:33:38 Daniel Hilson
On the one hand, not time the technology, that's what grants and incentives are for, right, like grants, incentives are trying to close the total cost of ownership gap and protect you a bit if you're a first mover from these challenges. So the reason why the FDA is funding a huge amounts for bus operators right now is because they know some people are gonna make.
00:33:54 Daniel Hilson
Stakes, but they fundamentally funded the whole thing, so you've got to be a bit careful, but at the same time it is it is difficult, but there's sort of bets you can make, like if a vehicle works for your use case today and it's.
00:34:06 Daniel Hilson
Cost.
00:34:06 Daniel Hilson
Effective. You know that's OK, that's going to work. You know, even if a vehicle 2 is down, the track comes along and can do that a lot better. And the range is better and the battery will survive.
00:34:17 Daniel Hilson
That vehicle still have resale value to some mum and dad who wants to buy a passenger vehicle in the future. And you know, and basically it's a good total cost of ownership.
00:34:24 Daniel Hilson
Asset for them.
00:34:25 Daniel Hilson
So you know, some of these bets are.
00:34:28 Daniel Hilson
You know are able to be made today, but yeah, you do need to plan and that's why we have this multi year asset planning philosophy which is maybe you do delay a year in some cases you know that's OK and maybe you accelerate because the vehicle costs.
00:34:41 Daniel Hilson
Have come down.
00:34:42 Daniel Hilson
So yeah, you need that. And one of the things why software is important to complement.
00:34:47 Daniel Hilson
Consulting is because you need to be able to do that. Replanting cost effectively. If you have to get consultants in a loan every year.
00:34:54 Daniel Hilson
That becomes prohibitively expensive. It needs to be done in an automated way for the next year. You just press a button and you say, right? Well, I've sold some vehicles. I've bought some. What's the new technologies? Give me a.
00:35:04 Daniel Hilson
Look at what I should do now.
00:35:06 Daniel Hilson
So that's sort of also why I'm a true believer in automation here. It needs to be an automated planning process that can recast every year.
00:35:13 Chris Sass
Well, going that way, you talked a bit earlier about digital twin technology.
00:35:18 Chris Sass
And are using digital tins quite a bit to do that, so you have a virtual example of a metro. I don't know metro situation that you're working with.
00:35:28 Chris Sass
And is that how you're coming up with the recommendations then?
00:35:33 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. So essentially, you know, will it depends on how long we're we're engaged. I mean hopefully we sell people a license for multiple years, which we do in many cases. So in that case, once we have the digital twin engaged and essentially that will map the network, there's in that industry there's I think called GTFS which is a standard file. Unfortunately the UK is called.
00:35:52 Daniel Hilson
Is exchange slightly different, but kind of roughly model on the same concept, which is really about scheduling, you know, starts stops where things need to go.
00:36:00 Daniel Hilson
But then I also have scheduling systems like hastas or octopus where they'll give, you know, richer information about that. So once we have that all mapped into our system to update it for vehicle types or hey, I've bought this vehicle, another vehicle, it's very quick. So it's really about mapping that the first time and then being able to.
00:36:17 Daniel Hilson
Rerun.
00:36:18 Daniel Hilson
A scenario you know the next year or the year.
00:36:21 Daniel Hilson
After, that's quite a quick exercise, so it's so important and it hasn't been done that way. You know, people do get a consultant, they get a report, stick it on a shelf next year, they're like, well, hang on, what happens?
00:36:31 Daniel Hilson
Business just you know, you know this particular technology is unviable now or this is not happening or Proterra goes out of business. What? Yeah, these things happen, right. And so they have to re re replan and so you know our hope is it will move more and more towards automation.
00:36:48 Niall Riddell
I spent about five years forecasting the energy market and the one thing I can consistently say is I usually got it wrong.
00:36:55 Niall Riddell
The problem with forecasting and scenario planning is it's really challenging. Do you tend to forecast a bracket, you know, like a range, you know, under these scenarios, these drivers you're high under these you're low and therefore what are the two or three really big drivers you look at? Is it battery technology? Is it economics and oil price, what do you see dictating those sort of upper and lower brackets in the scenarios?
00:37:19 Daniel Hilson
Look, I'd say one thing which is model the worst.
00:37:21 Daniel Hilson
Case.
00:37:22 Daniel Hilson
You know, start there because if you model the worst case, you can kind of then look at. OK, great. That's everything will work in that worst case. Then you can build from there. So we so we model that as a baseline, but then you're absolutely right. Like sensitivity analysis is critical. So we we will run out.
00:37:40 Daniel Hilson
Yeah. For example, we did the modelling of the whole of Bristol and we went and spoke to the, you know, to the mayor and all the stakeholders. And we said look, you know, depending on prices, depending on all these things, this is what's gonna happen and you can make a decision. You can either view, take the worst, take the best or somewhere in between and then you can make decisions. But absolutely forecasting needs to be a.
00:38:00 Daniel Hilson
Assumption driven, the assumptions have to be visible and honest and then you can do scenario planning.
00:38:06 Niall Riddell
Dan, this is incredible. You've taken us on a journey that clearly indicates you are moving us towards a world where we are creating scenarios of the future right before our very eyes. So delighted to have had you on the podcast. I'm very much looking forward to watching some of those scenarios come to life.
00:38:25 Daniel Hilson
Great. Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a really engaging conversation.
00:38:29 Chris Sass
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