Fleet News Group

Fleet News Group’s podcast host Caroline Falls chats via Skype to truck industry stalwart and advocate Jacquelene Brotherton as she drives to an appointment (We mention that because the sound quality is a bit bumpy). They talk about the ups and downs in the industry, covering staff shortages, Scott’s transport group’s collapse, concern about sustainability, shifts to improve regulation, appreciation of drivers, and acknowledgement of professionalism in the industry.   Brotherton grew up out the back of Burke where she met her future friends and bosses in the transport industry. Today she wears several hats, including chair of the Transport Women Australia Ltd, which brings together women from every facet of the industry — drivers, administrators, etcetera — for mentoring, networking, training and awards.

In this Fleet News Group podcast linked here Samantha Johnson, managing director of Polestar Australia, talks about the Volvo sister company’s electric vehicle design and its pole position among automakers in the sustainability race. “Polestar really are ahead of everyone else in the auto industry, and they are influencing others to come along on their journey,” said Johnson. “We are doing everything that we can to bring the emissions down to zero within our cars that we are manufacturing and also as an organisation.” Johnson is formerly of Volvo, which is owned by Sweden-based Geely, the same group that owns Polestar. Polestar started selling its electric vehicle the Polestar 2 in Australia in 2021 and to date has about 2000 vehicles on the road. The Polestar 2 is based on the automaker's Precept concept.

Tim Washington, Co-founder and CEO of EV charging provider JET Charge, talks to Fleet News Group about the rapid rise of EVs in Australia, the start-up’s growth and evolution since it began more than a decade ago as an installer for Tesla home charging stations in Melbourne, and its trial of a charge-as-a-service business model.   When we spoke in late April, the latest data showed EVs sold in Australia in March was almost 10 percent of all new car sales for that month, a startling change from 1-2 percent of sales just a few years ago. Meanwhile EV sales in the UK and the US are slowing.   “I think Australia will be one of the countries that really bucks the trend in relation to EV uptake,” said Washington, adding, “ And the main reason for that is because we are far more receptive to Chinese-made vehicles than the US and Europe, because we have no manufacturing to protect.”    And, he continued, “They've only just started exporting to the rest of the world. The reason you haven't seen most of these brands is because they've been basically satisfying demand in China. As competition increases, and they look to grow their market share, they will start exporting. Australia is one of the Western countries that accepts these vehicles. And so I actually think we're going to see Australia outpace the rest of the world in vehicle adoption.”

Noel Toribio Ilao, Director IV Equipment Bureau at the Department of Public Works and Highways in the Republic of Philippines, speaks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about a fleet of land vehicles, barges and boats that cater for infrastructure and rescue in the 7000-island nation. The Philippines is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world,” said Ilao, adding, “ I think we're number three. We are visited by different calamities — on the natural side, we have typhoons, we are lying in an earthquake belt, which is the Pacific Ring of Fire.”

Daron Brinsdon, integrated development solutions manager at Teletrac Navman Australia, talks about key findings from a global survey the fleet management telematics group released in March. Teletrac Navman has some 700,000 vehicles connected to its technology, spanning the globe. It surveyed about 500 fleets finding some two thirds of them currently operate electric vehicles. But they are still in transition and facing challenges. “This two thirds has varying rates of onboarding,” said Brinsdon, adding, “We're still getting a lot of people who suffer from range anxiety, and worry about whether adopting EVs will allow them to perform the work they need to.”   He said the higher capital expenditure needed to acquire electric vehicles compared with traditional internal combustion powered vehicles was also a constraint on wider EV adoption.

Fleet News Group editor, Marc Sibbald, guest hosts the latest podcast with Jonny Parker, CEO and founder of EV Infrastructure group Thundergrid in New Zealand. Sibbald caught up with Parker on the sidelines of the EROAD’s Fleet Day, held in Christchurch in late February. They talk about how NZ followed the Norwegian model to support EV adoption and how now EVs are going to help power NZ. “We’re basically here to protect the grid,” said Parker describing Thundergrid, adding, an explanation of how increasing demands on the island nation’s power grid could lead to increased brownouts. 

Dundee is a bit of a star for EVs in Europe, notably for public transport and its innovative charging hubs. Award winning fleet leader Fraser Crichton, Corporate Operations Fleet Manager at Dundee City Council in Scotland, tells Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls all about a transformation spurred by an enthusiasm to clean the city’s air. Dundee, half way between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, is nestled in a volcanic seat. Air is trapped hanging over the bowl cradling a city 8 miles by 5 miles.  “It just like sits like a soup in the city,” said Crichton. “13 years ago, I went to an air quality meeting and discovered all these issues that we had with transportation. I just thought we're going to have to change this, we're going to have to do something about this. So that was the start of the journey,” said Crichton, adding: “We moved slowly but surely.” Today more than quarter of the council’s 800-asset fleet is electric powered. And the whole city is networked with charging hubs and infrastructure, from pop-up street chargers, in all quarters and across disadvantaged and advantaged precincts.

Fleet News Group podcast features CEO of London-based Fully Charged Dan Caesar. He talks about the You-Tube star channel expanding to host electric vehicle and home shows around the world, including Everything Electric at the Sydney Showground in February.  “We would sum it up as a festival of electrification,” said Caesar.  He said the attraction of electric vehicles for many is just how tech advanced they are.  “The further you get away from the environmentalists, and the more you get into the mainstream, the thing that seems to really work is it's progressive. It's cool. It's new, it's the best tech,” said Caesar. 

Adam Dennis, electric vehicle specialist at telematics provider Webfleet talks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about a platform his they launched in the US, the rapid growth of EVs, and the imperative fleets are experiencing to make the shift to cut emissions. The EV Services Platform unveiled by Webfleet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January integrates data from a range of providers, including charging equipment group CTEK and location specialist TomTom. It was hailed as a game changer for fleet customers to better manage their operations, including allocation of vehicles for specific jobs and management of battery charging.  “We'll capture all the data from the charging events … give you good battery analytics, give you better ideas on when and how to charge. You can assign profiles to your charging stations so that they only charge when you're collecting green power, or they only charge in off peak times,” said Dennis, adding, “This will just allow us to offer larger fleet owners a much wider solution package.”

For our first podcast for 2024, host Caroline Falls talks with Chris Noone, CEO of car subscription provider Carly. “If we take a hypothetical example a fleet manager may own or lease 100 vehicles, but at certain points of the year, they might need 120 vehicles or they could be subscription vehicles." "And so they can make really smart decisions about how to get the most cost effective use of their capital. And then when they do have shorter term requirements for vehicles, they can get them within about two days notice. So the whole concept of sustainability has been baked into our business right from early on, even before we started talking about a lot of the environmental and technological changes that are happening.”

Dr Steve Nuttall, a director at research group Fifth Quadrant, likes to talk about fleet leaders, a group he’s identified after studying them for decades. In this podcast he explains what a Fleet Management leader does with their fleet and how you can take a leadership role within your organisation as a Fleet Manager.

“What we're going to see during 2024 is a real focus on our hybrid products in the 300 series range,” said Daniel Petrovski, head of product strategy at Hino Australia, talking with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls. “They’ve gone through a massive increase in orders.” Sales of the hybrid 300 have risen from about 50 a year to an order bank of some 350 as of late November when the podcast was recorded. He said lead-time on the vehicle was sitting at about six months.

Jess Bala, General Motors new managing director for Australia and New Zealand talks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about the US car company’s plans to bring the Cadillac brand down under, starting with the electric powered luxury SUV Lyriq in 2024.   “The Cadillac brand, globally is going through a very big transformation right now to an all EV portfolio which we will achieve by the end of the decade in 2030,” said Bala, adding, “And when you look at what is happening in Australia and New Zealand from an EV transformation standpoint, and how tech savvy our customers are, it just feels like the perfect time to introduce the Cadillac brand and bring this next generation of EV vehicles down under.”

Fleet News podcast host Caroline Falls talks with Collin Jennings, head of government relations and advocacy at the Motor Traders’ Association of NSW about training up the automotive workforce in Australia to meet the challenge of the increasing prevalence of electric vehicles, particularly for mechanics.   “In, Australia, just in mechanics — and this is excluding areas like auto electricians and body repairers and tow truck drivers — there’s just over 116,000 employed in motor mechanics. EVs are a different system, they're a different vehicle, and they require different skills,” said Jennings.

In this Fleet News Group podcast with host Caroline Falls, Dave Sanders, co-founder of Bestrane, talks about the escalation in interest in sustainable transport solutions and how his company which has eliminating waste at its heart helps transport and logistics groups. “If I look at Origin Energy, for example, who are right in the crosshairs of the sustainability issue. Right now, they're in an industry that is struggling to understand what it means to be sustainable in supplying gas … From a fleet perspective, they've got lots of vehicles running around providing a service to a lot of Australia that doesn't have a great alternative right now; that may not be the case in the future. So from a sustainability perspective, they're trying to understand how can we do more with a minimum fleet necessary. And that's really the sort of services that Bestrane provide, not only on a one- time basis, but more importantly, over a much longer period of time.” Sanders said conversations about improving a company’s sustainability have reached board level now. 

Lex Forsyth, CEO and co-founder of Janus Electric, an Australian startup that converts diesel engine prime movers to battery electric, talks about xxxx and xxxx in this edition of the Fleet News Group podcast. Janus Electric was founded in 2020 when co-founders Lex Forsyth and Bevan Dooley tested an idea to convert a diesel prime mover to a battery electric vehicle. “We thought, well, let's give this a go and take an old prime mover, which was 10 years old at the time and get a rolling prototype,” said NSW central coast based Forsyth. A few busy years later, trucks number 17 and 18 are being built at the Janus Electric facility and they have orders for another 100 or so. Some 44 people work there.

In this Fleet News Group podcast, host Caroline Falls talks with Dickson Leow, General Manager at IM group, and also of its unit Infinitev, which saves spent electric vehicle batteries from landfill.  The interview was just a day after Leow presented at the inaugural Australian Battery Recycling and Manufacturing Summit.

Mo Abbas, strategy and marketing executive at last-mile delivery group ANC Delivers, announced plans on this week’s Fleet News Group podcast with host Caroline Falls for an initiative to accelerate Australian fleets’ transition to electric vehicles. ANC and partners including Fleet News Group, LDV Australia, Evie Networks and CarBon, will launch the campaign on World EV Day — on Saturday, September 9.  The campaign — Take the Pledge — is aimed at getting organisations to pledge publicly their intentions on how many vehicles in their fleets they will switch to electric powertrains. “We're launching a nationwide campaign to encourage companies across Australia and in fact further abroad to take the pledge and commit to adding zero emission vehicles to their fleet, so that we can support sustainable transport practices,” said Abbas, adding, “What we are trying to achieve is galvanise a commitment to an energy transition, one that's tangible, and that's backed by a hard commitment by a specific endpoint.” ANC is committing to 100 electric vehicles by the end of 2025. It already has about 20, including a couple of three-wheeled tuk tuks, in its fleet of more than 1,000 vans and trucks nationwide.

Fleet News Group podcast, where host Caroline Falls talks about the intersection of fleet and sustainability introduces Heather Bone, the director ESG — environment, social and governance, ostensibly chief sustainability officer at Team Global Express. Bone is a regular on the speaker and panel circuit at fleet transport, and sustainability conferences.  Team Global Express is making a name for itself as a leader in the transition for a greener lower emissions fleet. It emerged out of the Japan Post Toll Group when the unit was hived off to a private equity group Allegro Funds in September 2021. It rebadged itself from Toll Global Express to Team Global Express, still the team at TSG.

Liz Yeaman, founder of NZ based transport consultancy Retyna, talks to Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about how she participated in NZ’s transformation to EVs almost 20 years ago, the upcoming Electro Mobility Summit in NZ she will be chairing next month, and the urgent need to adopt the technology we have in the face of climate change crises.   Prior to setting up the consultancy in 2018 Yeaman worked for 22 years at the EECA, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Latterly there she was general manager of transport and responsible for leading the government authority’s electric vehicle program.   She started working on EV projects at EECA as early as 2007.