Countless commercial fleet owners have run successful pilot EV programs. They are typically announced to great fanfare, and well received by industry, senior business leaders and the public alike because they deliver several operational and environmental outcomes. It makes you wonder, why are there still so many diesel vans and trucks on Australian roads.
The problem is that hardly any of these pilot programs develop into full-scale EV rollouts. The largest private fleet of commercial EVs in Australia is less than 15 vehicles. It’s far more common to see companies roll back their electrification commitments than meet them– including major brands like Amazon.
Businesses want to transition to EVs and understand the benefits of doing so. However, they routinely underestimate the growing pains involved. They don’t realise that many of the biggest EV challenges only occur at scale. Or they don’t sufficiently plan, evaluate and optimise their processes during the pilot program so that they can be repeated at scale.
Businesses often reach the end of an EV pilot none the wiser on how to move forward and find themselves starting from scratch. What follows are six steps that all fleet owners must take to develop an effective pilot EV program and turn it into a full-scale electric fleet, summarised from Adiona’s guide to bridging the gap between pilot and full-scale rollout.
1: Goal planning and data collection
The goals of an EV rollout need to be clearly defined as early as possible, and they should cover the entire EV journey, not just the final destination. Yes, it’s important to show ambition and have one critical objective. However, the planning process should not be wholly defined by a single desired outcome or metric, such as converting 50% of vehicles to EVs. The planning stage should be much more tailored to your specific organisation and encompass your business needs. It should look to answer questions such as ‘to what extent is it viable to transition our fleet to EVs?’ and ‘What would that rollout entail?’
Comprehensive planning needs to be completed at the pilot stage to ensure that the scope and results of the pilot are aligned with what your company is trying to achieve in a national roll-out later.
Exercises in this stage will revolve around:
- People – creating teams and defining responsibilities
- Metrics – exploring commitments and targets
- Benchmarking – assessing the current state of play so that you can track key metrics and meet targets
2: Getting buy-in
It’s time to show your plans to the people who need to see them. Present your objectives, benchmarking, key metrics, and success indicators to your stakeholders. You should tailor your approach to each individual depending on their status, role and their interests in the program. For example, it’s wise to demonstrate cost savings to the CFO.
3: Future-proofing
Pilot programs quickly become obsolete if organisations do not consider future needs and the internal/external events that may dent their EV ambitions.
Your team will need to discuss and simulate the optimal scenarios for the makeup of your fleet when you’ll roll it out, and what could change in future. You must calculate current, projected, best and worst-case scenarios for business growth and fleet requirements. You must consider geographical changes and possible new locations/warehouses. Regulatory changes, government schemes and how they vary across regions should also be a factor. Unfortunately, the government currently offers little clarity on incoming EV incentives/taxes/policies.
Simulation technology has made leaps and bounds in recent years and is much more effective and affordable than it once was. However, it invariably requires high-quality data. Some scenarios that you may want to simulate include different vehicle model options, different charging infrastructure/locations/speeds, energy price variations, or changes to routes.
4: Selecting suppliers and purchasing timelines
Now it’s time to purchase your first electric vehicle/s. Simulation tools should be used again to determine when to make this purchase. EVs don’t all have to be bought at once, although that could help negotiate a good price.
Break up the project into different tasks, for instance, converting light trucks and smaller vehicles first. Before finding new suppliers, consult your existing providers about their EV options and plans. They already know your business needs, and they have the necessary real-world context to provide support. Also, review new providers who specialise in EV fleets and start getting quotes based on your scenario planning.
Using this information, you can draft a purchasing timeline, including the initial pilot, infrastructure design and construction, vehicle selection, and the delivery of the vehicles.
5: Evaluation
From day one of a pilot program, keep close track of the benchmarks and metrics laid out earlier and measure them against their desired objectives.
This evaluation should be continuous, not at the end of a project. Set up a simple tracking spreadsheet and check in cadence to plot changes against a timeline.
6: Full-scale roll-out
After a successful pilot, you can push on with a full-scale rollout. Unfortunately, at scale, some extra challenges don’t arise during a pilot. Charging infrastructure is arguably the biggest scale challenge. You may choose to build it yourself or work with a third-party supplier who specialises in charging commercial EV fleets.
Scale rollouts require repeating the same steps of planning, evaluation, and simulation, as before, while armed with the results of the pilot program. These processes should be continually updated and optimised. Any issues or inefficiencies that arose during the pilot relating to data collation and simulations should be ironed out.
Bonus step: Becoming an advocate
One final bonus step is to become an EV fleet advocate. The lack of first-hand experience will become evident to any organisation transitioning to EVs. More people must share their learnings publicly to assist others. Ways to pass on this knowledge will include writing case studies and blogs that can be published by the media, suppliers and industry bodies advocating for EV transition.