All Viewpoints articles – Page 4
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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 ...
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CommentaryCould this be a new approach to EV adoption?
This week we have asked Benoit Laflamme, a senior business leader focused on the energy transition of transport, to share a relatively simple solution to removing an EV adoption blocker. The transport sector is facing a massive amount of change in the coming years, we all acknowledge that. In order ...
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CommentaryTime for a rethink on weights and dimensions for carbon zero
If you joined us at Road Transport Expo for the Thursday conference sessions, you’ll know we had a great day of discussion and presentations on the topic of decarbonisation. During the course of the day we asked participants to help us to create a word cloud, answering the question: “What ...
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CommentaryHydrogen - coming in from the cold
We’ve had plenty of input from the battery electric advocates of late, so for this week’s commentary we have turned to Tim Harper, CEO of Element 2, for his input. I recently attended th FT’s Hydrogen Summit, a global gathering from 47 countries, with more than 700 registered ...
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CommentaryCleaning up the bio-fuel sector
The Renewable Transport Fuel Association (RTFA) has popped up on the radar this week, in part because its CEO, Gaynor Hartnell, is joining us on the panel at the Zemo Conference on Thursday this week, but also because it put out a statement in response to a Transport & Energy ...
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CommentaryThe costs of flexibility
In preparation for the Zemo Partnership conference taking place in London next week (15 June, City Hall, London – book your place to attend), we had reason to spend an hour on the phone to Professor David Cebon from the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight last week. He will be ...
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CommentaryWhy 80% just isn’t good enough
“Hydrogen will have a place in the net zero energy mix, just not as a transportation fuel.” If you hang around this sector long enough, you’ll hear someone lob that ever so polite put down in your direction if you bring up the subject of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as ...
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CommentaryKeeping the lights on…
“What are you going to do when there’s a power cut?” It’s an innocuous enough question, but one that made Ian Greene splutter on his glass of wine, when his wife raised the question one evening a couple of years ago. Greene is the Head of Fleet at City Enviroment ...
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CommentaryHard yards ahead for the start-up truck builders
There was so much to see and write about from the ACT Expo the other week, we thought it warranted further comment. We asked industry analyst Oliver Dixon from Guidehouse to give us his perspective on the event. What a difference a year makes. Last year, the primary topic of ...
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CommentaryHydrogen hype or realistic option…?
Much news from California last week, where the state has recently brought in legislation outlawing the sale of diesel-powered trucks from 2036, and Anaheim played host to the ACT Expo event, a major gathering of the global carbon zero commercial vehicle clans. The new CARB (California Air Resources Board) regulations ...
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CommentaryDifferent continent, same challenges…
“It’s not that we can’t overcome challenges, but we don’t overcome them by pretending they don’t exist,” the words of Andrew Boyle, first Vice Chair of the American Trucking Associations (ATA) and Co-President of Massachusetts-based Boyle Transportation, as he gave evidence in front of a Senate sub-committee on the future ...
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CommentaryIndustry transformation happening here and now
There has been a great deal written on industry disruption and the emergence of new start-up firms that challenge the status quo. Much of it has been framed in the context of digitization and technology, as new start-ups leverage flexibility and market speed that legacy companies cannot match. In the ...
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CommentaryHydrogen in the spotlight with HVS truck launch
Inner city Glasgow is an unlikely headquarters for the UK’s newest truck builder, but when HVS (stands for Hydrogen Vehicle Systems) took the wraps off its new hydrogen fuel cell-powered truck at the CV Show this morning, the company announced its arrival on the truck building scene - from small ...
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CommentaryStarting your carbon reduction plan
Over the past three weeks, we have tried to park the obsession with the search for the holy grail of carbon zero and focus on the steps the industry can take today to decarbonise the commercial vehicle and road freight sector. The more we scratch away at the carbon zero ...