In a world waking up to climate change, the low-hanging fruit is to convert our global commercial fleets of delivery and industrial vehicles to electric as soon as possible.
Close to one-third (29%) of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions comes from the transportation sector, of which nearly a quarter (23%) is from medium- and heavy-duty trucks.
While there are far more passenger vehicles on the road, heavy trucks are driven nearly nonstop. The average family car is driven a little more than 11,000 miles a year, while each “class 8” heavy truck, mainly tractor-trailers and multi-axle dump trucks, logs more than 68,000 miles a year — more than six times the comparative mileage.
The most impactful move companies can make now to up the climate change fight, is to convert their fossil-fuel fleets to clean electricity sooner rather than later.
If saving the environment is a priority, companies such as Amazon don’t have to wait until 2022 or 2030 for commercial EVs to be economical — the math works out now.
Unlike passenger cars, delivery vehicles operate on set routes, a fact that alleviates range anxiety. Besides climate and range, however, there are several important advantages to converting trucks and fleet vehicles to electric power.
Modern combustion engines are tremendously complex machines. They require oil changes and regular parts replacement to operate at peak efficiency.
EVs in comparison have one-fifth the number of powertrain parts. Electric cars need no oil, while regenerative braking means brake pads last more than three times longer.
While high efficiency and low maintenance cost are great, moving wholesale toward new forms of transportation does create a financial conundrum for the heavy truck business.
However, these can be taken care of by providing Innovative financing for trucks and batteries which will bring significant cost savings to operators and make quick conversion to EVs financially feasible.
EVs offer a compelling ROI model right now in terms of fuel savings performance and cost, no doubt powerful motivating factors for commercial fleet operators.
This article based on sponsored content by Ideanomics; edited by Clean-Future Team