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All Viewpoints articles – Page 4
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CommentaryFreight Carbon Zero – looking ahead for 2024
As we kick off the New Year 2024, we have asked our expert commentators to share their hopes for the year ahead as the industry continues its drive to decarbonise. Chris Douglas For the sake of the operators, let’s just try to get along… I’m a big fan of open, ...
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CommentaryBeginning of the end for diesel – as COP28 secures agreement
They took it to the wire, but the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference, which concluded last week with a landmark agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels”, has been heralded as a major breakthrough. While many wanted a full commitment to a phase-out of fossil fuels, which ...
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CommentaryImpact of autonomous vehicles on freight
We caught up with Dominic Schofield at the CENEX LCV Show back in September, lighting the fuse for this week’s commentary looking at the role of connected autonomous vehicles in the freight sector. We sent him off to explore whether this is the holy grail for battery electric commercial vehicles… ...
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CommentaryPublic and Private – Two Sides of the Same Fleet Decarbonisation Coin…
Chris Douglas who has spent the past 25 years working across numerous road freight roles in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, this week shares his views on how we should be more open to taking learnings from one another…
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CommentaryFrom “sun to wheel”, the new energy ecosystem
For this week’s newsletter we’ve turned to Daimler Truck’s Member of the Management Board Dr Andreas Gorbach , who, in a recent LinkedIn post gave an enlightened perspective on the energy ecosystem. Time to shake off the legacy terms of reference and consider a truly world view of energy management, ...
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CommentaryThe times they are a charging…
Truck charging Source: Shutterstock This week, we’ve been musing on the matter of a public charging network for trucks. Over the past few weeks, we’ve started to see some notable movements in this area which is great to see. Moto Hospitality has recently submitted planning permission for ...
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CommentaryLong and winding road to net zero
Various discussions over the past few weeks have got us pondering whether we should be concerned with the rate of progress the industry is making on its transition to the net zero nirvana. There is a huge amount of investment going into developing new trucks ...
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CommentaryHow can we counter the resistance to Net Zero?
This week’s commentary is penned by Jamie Sands, Group Operational Support and Systems Manager at Welch’s Transport, raising concerns about the industry’s apparent ambivalence to the climate crisis.
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CommentaryZero Emmision Road Freight Demonstration (ZERFD) programme a big opportunity for industry
In the week the UK Government announced the £200m funding for the zero emission truck and infrastructure demonstrations, Andy Salter cast his eye over the plans
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CommentaryOne year on and the journey has only just begun
This week we’re celebrating the first birthday of Freight Carbon Zero and we thought we’d focus the commentary to reflect on the past 12 months and take a peek at what’s in store for the year ahead. Even though there has been significant progress with decarbonising the industry on many ...
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CommentaryDecarbonisation Upskilling – Such a long way to go…
Chris Douglas who has spent the past 25 years working across numerous road freight roles in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, this week shares his observations from a recent Zoom training session… ‘Welcome to the road transport industry. We’re a band of brothers, us HGV drivers, I mean, not ...
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CommentaryRedrawing the truck brand differentiation battleground
For this week’s commentary, Darren Newman has been musing on how brands will differentiate themselves in a carbon zero world where energy tariffs are more important than miles per gallon… In an industry with high costs and low margins, maintaining competitiveness has always been a tight focus for transport operators, ...
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CommentaryTruck Fleet Decarbonisation – What a journey…
This week Chris Douglas from Polaris Consultancy, who has spent the past 25 years working in road freight across operations, policy creation and consultancy roles in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, shares his views on the journey facing us all to a carbon zero future. I can’t help but ...
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CommentaryBattery swaps – the great leap forward?
If you’ve been following the debate around how to decarbonise our heaviest vehicles, you’ll be aware that it’s essentially been a three-horse race. Out in front are battery trucks, with megawatt chargers soon to give them a boost. Close behind are hydrogen fuel cell trucks, accompanied by all the heated ...
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CommentaryWe’re all energy companies now...
Fixed, tracker or variable? No, we’re not talking mortgages, this week we’re on energy tariffs. We’ve been editing the latest edition of our Summer podcast series this week (OK, we’re being a bit liberal with the use of summer…) and it’s triggered some thinking around the topic and how fleet ...
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CommentarySurvival of the fittest
Tevva’s decision to merge its operations with little-known US company ElectraMeccanica has underlined the challenges the new start-up manufacturers face as they seek to gain a foothold in the ultra-competitive global truck market.
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CommentaryMind the gap - make sure nobody gets left behind
We joined another call last week with some worried fleet buyers, grappling with the demands from their boards, and their customers, for progress on the road to carbon zero. They’d all done their initial homework, had started their investigations and were in the early stages of business modelling and they’d ...
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CommentaryIf you think car electrification is tough – try decarbonising lorries and coaches
For this week’s newsletter commentary, we passed the keyboard over to the RHA’s managing director Richard Smith to give us the association’s views on the decarbonisation debate. The RHA fully supports net-zero targets but there is a clear and present danger that without proper planning and transition the economy, which ...
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CommentaryBreakthrough needed for carbon zero acceleration
In recent years, we have seen increased discussion in both industry and government circles about what the dominant net-zero solution will be for heavy goods vehicles: battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell electric. Another possibility is it will be a homogenous mix of these technologies, however experience suggests that this ...
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CommentaryThe world of carbon zero trucks
This week we are launching our Carbon Zero Vehicle Index, a database covering all the zero emission vehicles either coming soon or currently available on the market. It’s an impressive listing with nearly 100 different vehicle models in the dataset, although with many vehicles in small series production and some ...