By Tod Trousdell, Fleet Marketing Consultant and Partner/RobertsTrousdell Communications
While this year’s NTEA Work Truck Week hit an all-time attendance record of 15,790 attendees and 536 exhibitors, let’s just say the 2024 version of Work Truck Week was a little less ‘electric.’
Seemingly gone are the days when the mere mention of electrification sent many fleets – pressured by corporate ESG initiatives and government edicts – blindly into EV adoption before anyone knew how to successfully implement them.
“EVs are going to be an important part of the story...there’s no denying what a game changer they are,” said David Hayward, Global Fleet Director for ABM. “It’s just that I think it’s going to take a while for EVs to develop fully and that’s going to require a lot of different options to help fleets meet sustainability goals along the way.
By Ed Pierce, Fleet Management Weekly’s Brand Acceleration
As more interest in adding EVs to fleets surges, fleet professionals are running into roadblocks on electrification. There are obstacles that have prevented some fleets from taking the plunge to electrify.
The transition to electric vehicles can be intimidating and complex for fleets who have invested time and money into optimizing an ICE fleet, notes Josh Green, founder and CEO of Inspiration Mobility.
Inspiration brings EV leasing, EV-first fleet management, and charging under one roof to accelerate and de-risk the transition to EVs.
Ford's latest patent could drastically increase the usability of pickup truck beds, allowing for customers to nearly double the size of their cargo capacity at the push of a button.
Under normal circumstances, the rails would stay retracted, inside the bed walls. But when deployed, actuators could extend the bed rails up on either side. With just the rails in their extended position, owners can store longer items like lumber or ladders—think anything too long to normally fit in the bed—horizontally across the bed, freeing up space underneath for other storage.
FreeWire Technologies announced a clever new Accelerate Program that essentially installs and manages its EV charger technology at no cost to businesses, making profits elsewhere while speeding up the adoption rate on new installations. The program’s first business to sign up is surprising but encouraging.
Essentially, FreeWire is paying businesses like Chevron, the first company to sign up for the Accelerate Program, for use of its property to install its charger technology. FreeWire, in turn, operates and maintains the equipment and takes the profits from EV charging sessions.
Stellantis, one of the largest automakers in the world, agreed Tuesday to comply with California's vehicle emissions standards that are the toughest in the nation and require zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles to make up 68% of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2030.
Stellantis now joins four big automakers -- Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW – that agreed to follow California’s rules in 2019. The Trump administration then launched an antitrust investigation of those companies, but eventually closed it after failing to find any wrongdoing.
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares called Tuesday’s agreement “a win-win solution that is good for the customer and good for the planet” in a statement.