Register now for up-to-date information on sustainability best practices and where Canada stands with EV adoption. Ilana Weitzman, VP of Strategic Development for Electric Autonomy Canada, will speak on trends, US-Canada contrasts, technological evolution, EV charging, tools & resources.
Ilana Weitzman regularly speaks at new mobility and logistics conferences across Canada and the US, helping fleets to make confident decisions around the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles.
For information or to register for the 2024 AFLA Canada Fleet Summit, click here.
By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
We spoke with Joe George, President of Cox Automotive Mobility Solutions, to learn more about the services that Cox Automotive offers its clients and what insights he’s seeing in the industry’s future.
"As President of Cox Automotive, I’ve witnessed the industry evolve over the last five years. We’re interested in the things that are involved with the revolution of vehicle technologies."
"I think we're an even more important part of helping our fleet clients optimize their total cost operation, which means we're helping them minimize downtime. We’re going to play an important role in helping them move to more clean technology fuels, whether that be electric or hydrogen fuel cell."
According to research by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, about 46 percent of all crashes involving bad weather take place during the winter.
Winter storms, bad weather, and sloppy road conditions are a factor in nearly half a million crashes and more than 2,000 road deaths every year. And December through March can be an especially busy time for dead batteries, flat tires, and vehicle extractions. With inclement weather in the forecast, AAA East Central advises motorists to take precautions to avoid deadly crashes and reach their destination safely.
Gary LaBush is a driver for Frito-Lay in Queens. He remembers the first time he sat behind the wheel of a Ford e-Transit delivery truck. Like most first time EV truck drivers, he wondered if the vehicle was actually on. “I was like, ‘What’s going on?’” he recalled. “There was no noise and no fumes.”
Now, he trains other drivers how to operate the company’s delivery trucks. He said he would struggle if he had to return to driving a gasoline powered van. “I wouldn’t want to do it,” he said. “After being in this — it’s just night and day.”
The US Transportation Department is investing $148.8 million for repairing or updating nearly 4,500 electric vehicle charging ports in some 20 states.
This new set of funds offers 24 recipients in 20 states grants to upgrade, replace, or repair existing EV charging infrastructure, and relieve some of the common frustrations drivers have when rolling up to an out-of-service charging port. Biden has the goal of bringing at least 500,000 public EV chargers online by the end of the decade – and that includes fast chargers no more than 50 miles apart on major highways and interstates.
The new funds are part of the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which is funded by a $1 trillion 2021 infrastructure law. Under the program, “states need to operate federally-funded charging ports for at least five years, which must work 97% of the time,” Reuters reports.