28. Decarbonizing Commercial Fleets: Lorna McAtear on Challenges and Innovations in Fleet Electrification

In this episode of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series, hosts Chris Sass and Niall Riddell dive deep into the world of commercial fleet electrification with expert guest Lorna McAtear, Fleet Manager for National Grid in the UK. Lorna brings her extensive knowledge to the table, discussing the complexities and unique challenges associated with transitioning commercial fleets to electric vehicles (EVs). She sheds light on the various types of fleets, from company cars to heavy-duty vehicles, and how each requires distinct approaches for successful electrification. Lorna emphasizes the importance of understanding fleet utilization patterns, operational needs, and the diverse range of vehicle types involved in commercial operations. 

Throughout the conversation, Lorna addresses common misconceptions and practical hurdles fleet managers face. She highlights the need for clear definitions of what constitutes a fleet and the importance of considering different fuel types, including electric, biofuels, and hydrogen, based on specific operational requirements. The discussion covers crucial topics such as the impact of range anxiety on commercial EV adoption, the evolving technology in battery and charging infrastructure, and the significance of driver and executive buy-in for a smooth transition. Lorna also shares her insights on how fleet managers can effectively plan for the future, leveraging advancements in EV technology to meet sustainability targets and operational efficiency. 

As the episode progresses, Lorna provides valuable advice on managing the human aspect of fleet electrification. She explains how to engage drivers, line managers, and executives to ensure a cohesive and informed approach to adopting EVs. Her experience in working with manufacturers to design and implement suitable EV solutions for various commercial needs offers listeners a comprehensive understanding of the steps involved in decarbonizing fleets. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of commercial fleet management and the pivotal role of electrification in achieving net-zero emissions. Don't miss out on this insightful discussion with one of the industry's leading voices on fleet electrification.

Meet our Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorna-mcatear-0b3a1153/

Transcript

Transcript 

00:00:02 Speaker 1 

Broadcasting from Washington, DC, This is Insider's Guide To Energy. 

00:00:17 Chris Sass 

This episode of Insider's Guide to Energy EV Miniseries is powered by Paua. Paua helps your business transition to electric vehicles by simplifying charging, managing payments, and optimizing your charging data. 

00:00:30 Chris Sass 

Welcome to another edition of the Insider's Guide to Energy EV series. Neil, what do we got going on this week? 

00:00:37 Niall Riddell 

This is one of my favorite topics. We are going to be talking about commercial fleet electrification and all the challenges that come with that. And we're super lucky because we have today with us, someone who has taught me pretty much everything I know about this space and to those British listeners, she'll be a very familiar name, but for those. 

00:00:57 Niall Riddell 

More further afield, we might need to introduce Lorna Mcateer, who is the fleet manager for National Grid here in the UK. Welcome to the podcast, Lorna. 

00:01:07 Lorna McAtear 

Thanks very much. Now I like that intro. You can do that again. 

00:01:12 Niall Riddell 

So we're here talking about commercial fleets and one of the things that I really struggled with and still struggle with today is the definition of what is a fleet. It's quite ambiguous statement. Would you help us unpack that statement? 

00:01:24 Lorna McAtear 

Yeah. And I think you've touched on one of the first definitions already just in that question, which is commercial fleet. But even in that commercial fleet space, cars often get bundled in. So you have car fleets when you work as a fleet manager, you have commercial fleets and as heads of fleet, you often get to run all of them. And so. 

00:01:43 Lorna McAtear 

You often need lots of different definitions, so you've got salary sacrifices. One way of getting vehicles in. 

00:01:48 Lorna McAtear 

The teams that tends to be run by HRP people, but fleets are often involved in a lot as well. As I said, you've got your company car fleets, you have Grey fleet which are people who drive business, hire vehicles but don't actually own their in car. US people are very familiar with that because they get strippings instead which end up giving them cash allowances is the equivalent. 

00:02:08 Lorna McAtear 

In the UK as well, there are all sorts of different ways of doing the car side of things. 

00:02:10 

So. 

00:02:13 Lorna McAtear 

And then you get commercial, which we tend to think of as things that are branded, although you can get some cars that branded and the commercial stuff that is branded as well tends to be vans. But then you go into size in different regulations. So in the US should be talking in sizes in terms of pound rates and in the UK we talk about 3.5 tonnes as being a threshold for. 

00:02:34 Lorna McAtear 

No license and then you into a whole different world of commercial fleet as well. When you get to your license because you have your TACA regulations and your CPC holders and all sorts of different. 

00:02:44 Lorna McAtear 

Basically, a whole bunch of rules and regulations, and in Europe it's at 2 times because it changed so at different weights in different countries on what you do and what it means and how all of that is invoked across different places. So just that definition for you just makes it nice and easy. 

00:03:02 Niall Riddell 

It's it's a complex little world that we're living in and what I what I tend to come back to is this idea that ultimately the vehicles that make up these fleets are the bits that keep the wheels on business and keep businesses move. 

00:03:12 Niall Riddell 

Leaving, but every fleet is unique pretty much in its own right. They've all got different characteristics and different vehicles. Can you tell us a bit about your fleet? 

00:03:20 Lorna McAtear 

Yeah. So where a lot of that comes in on those characteristics, things and differences, even in utilities, we may operate things differently. Some of us may choose to buy. Some of us may choose to lease and then that affects the relationships you have with your suppliers or what you do at an end of life with a vehicle. So absolutely unique in what you do. Some of us will rack things out. Some of us don't. 

00:03:41 Lorna McAtear 

You talk final mile fleets, so your postal services, your delivery companies and you've got a whole different set of challenges with those as well, so. 

00:03:50 Lorna McAtear 

My fleet is made-up of cars, commercial vehicles, small panel vans. I've got a lot of four by four vehicles because we do go off road and we do do lots of work putting in pylons and get into places that aren't easy to get to or don't have roads in the 1st place. And then they got some really fancy, quirky, really unique. 

00:04:10 Lorna McAtear 

Low loaders high ABS which are the lifting equipment and everything else nupes loads of references that you won't come across, which is all the different specialist funky equipment that I really like to play around with. That's where I kind of started. Fleet was on the commercial, difficult to do stuff. 

00:04:28 Niall Riddell 

And and we're here talking about electrification and quite frankly, the most people will be familiar with electric cars right now. And increasingly we're seeing more and more electric vans. You've just described a couple of vehicle types that I think I have a rough idea what you're talking about, but they're effectively all of the funkier vehicles that need to do the hard tasks. 

00:04:48 Niall Riddell 

How are we going to electrify that little lot? Because it can't be a big mass market like your average passenger car. 

00:04:54 Lorna McAtear 

No, and it's been a difficult market for fleets, full stop. Even if we talk ice, there's always been challenges in the manufacturer pulling out and then you haven't been left. 

00:05:02 Lorna McAtear 

An option so when the Range Rover stopped doing the defenders, you didn't have many choices in your other 4 by 4, so it's always been a problem for us in those niche areas. Throw in different fuel types and you get a whole raft of different challenges. Throw in people's perceptions of which fuel type is going to win the race and you get another after of challenges coming in there as well. So. 

00:05:23 Lorna McAtear 

Personally, I think everything can go electric. It just takes time. 

00:05:27 Lorna McAtear 

And it takes effort and it takes a different way of looking at things. 

00:05:31 Chris Sass 

You talked about a very diverse set of vehicles. I would think that ownership profile would vary. So the time that you own, let's say an excavator or some sort of heavy piece of equipment, you might write that off over a longer period of time than a passenger vehicle or a defender as you described. I would expect that you would either lease or own those. 

00:05:34 Lorna McAtear 

Yeah. 

00:05:50 Chris Sass 

For a shorter period of time, so are there different profiles and is that going to impact the electrification? Because if I've got a 10 year return on this investment or A5 year return on investment, it should be different than. 

00:06:00 Lorna McAtear 

Let's say a passenger car absolutely, and one of the bits of advice I gave a fleet manager who used to take their vehicles for five years. 

00:06:08 Lorna McAtear 

They were struggling to build a business case to go electric because of the higher upfront costs. So whilst everybody else has given all these complex answers on what they could should do and how to talk to the board, I just went extend. 

00:06:18 Lorna McAtear 

It. 

00:06:18 Lorna McAtear 

By you because actually, if you make that total cost of ownership better and we know the maintenance costs are cheaper and we know other things are lower price then. 

00:06:28 Lorna McAtear 

It's an easier one to do, so you're absolutely right. All the different types of view. 

00:06:32 Lorna McAtear 

And how hard you use them off road or in emergency situations will affect what you do with it. So I'm always giving out advice on the electrification journey on how to look at what you use, how you use it, where it goes home to, you know where that vehicle sleeps at night. 

00:06:52 Lorna McAtear 

Because all of that impacts your decisions and what can be easy to change versus the more difficult ones to change. 

00:07:01 Niall Riddell 

And one of the things that we talked about previously with a gentleman called Paul Kirby was this idea that commercial vehicles ultimately help people earn a living or, you know, create revenue and therefore their usage is often much, much higher. You've been running a number of commercial electric vehicles for a while now. Are you starting to see differences in operational? 

00:07:21 Niall Riddell 

Pattern that against what a passenger car might see. 

00:07:24 Lorna McAtear 

So this is where some of your more unique challenges come into the vehicles and this is? 

00:07:29 Lorna McAtear 

Politely, why? I have some frustrations with people who make policies and decisions because they do them based on their experience of a car and haven't got a scooby-doo, how to operate a commercial vehicle and you absolutely right. If you take one of my previous jobs I had Royal Mail, some of those vehicles were utilized 24 hours. It's the driver that changes. 

00:07:50 Lorna McAtear 

Not the vehicle. So when you've got people assuming. 

00:07:54 Lorna McAtear 

That a commercial vehicle goes back to the depot at 5:00 at night and it's parked up and it goes straight on a charger and it never goes out again. It's totally incorrect. So what you do is you change your shifts, you put a new driver in that vehicle, it goes out again. Anyone in the HV sector, you're always utilizing those vehicles, double man and the crews, whatever it is, that is your. 

00:08:14 Lorna McAtear 

Set. That is where the money is. That is what you have to look after, and that's what you keep running as much as you possibly can. So you'll always hear fleets talk about downtime, uptime management, this is where it all comes. 

00:08:27 Lorna McAtear 

And play throw an electric or different fuel type hydrogen. Any of the biofuels and you've got different challenges on what you can and can't do and how you make that work. 

00:08:36 Chris Sass 

That. 

00:08:37 Chris Sass 

It's interesting. So understanding that rapid charging may deteriorate your battery. 

00:08:44 Chris Sass 

Do you have to over buy vehicles or overbuy capacity so you have time to slow charge it? Or do you just drop it charge and keep the vehicle less time? 

00:08:52 Lorna McAtear 

Good questions depends on your operation and how you work and these are all the things as fleet managers, we have to think about as we're going forward. But don't forget that the architecture is changing those vehicles. The battery type is changing in those vehicles. So those more complex vehicles actually will end up with a different technology in them compared to what we've got in the cars today. So what we can do and how quickly we can charge those batteries. 

00:09:13 Lorna McAtear 

Will change and all it means is in a lot of cases just a different way of thinking. 

00:09:19 Lorna McAtear 

Think outside the box a bit more and this is where again fleet managers have to consider is that charging port the front of the vehicle or the rear of the vehicle? If you're a final mile delivery company or you're loading goods you back that vehicle onto a loading Bay, you want your charge port where you can charge without causing the trip hazard while you load that vehicle. 

00:09:39 Lorna McAtear 

If your utility vehicle you want to work out the back of the vehicle so you don't want the charging point anywhere near the back because you're actually working there all the time, so these are the differences that we have to overcome. And if you're using your depot and you've put those charging bays at the rear. 

00:09:53 Lorna McAtear 

To fill your loading stuff and then you go to a different manufacturer who's put the charging ports at the front of the vehicle. Then you've got to turn your vehicle around. You've got to do something different again. It just makes things very, very difficult in how you design, what you're doing as well as how you use those vehicles as well. But none of it's insurmountable. Technology is changing. 

00:10:16 Niall Riddell 

And one of the things that's interesting about that technology changing is we can see more and more passenger cars come into the market all the time, but it does seem when I speak to other fleet managers and other businesses, considering the transition that quite a lot is often raised about range, payload cost and the challenges with the selection of vans available on the market. 

00:10:37 Niall Riddell 

How do you overcome some of those issues around limited? 

00:10:40 Niall Riddell 

Choice. 

00:10:41 Lorna McAtear 

So there are a couple of things. 

00:10:43 Lorna McAtear 

In there one. 

00:10:44 Lorna McAtear 

This isn't new for fleet managers. It's always been the case. HGV's get the tech 1st and it comes down to vans. Cars get the tech 1st and it comes up to vans whichever way you want to look at it. Vans are always the poor insignificant partner of everybody else out there, just probably because of the margins are how we use them. But that's just. 

00:11:03 Lorna McAtear 

A fact and we have to live with it. It is not going to change. So suck it up. Deal with it. The other thing that goes on with that one as well then is. 

00:11:15 Lorna McAtear 

Actually you get some advantages when it comes down because you can see the tech is changing. 

00:11:20 Lorna McAtear 

Now yes, there are some regulations out there. You've got the safe mandate, you've got some other bits and pieces. Yes, we do have range anxiety when it comes to the commercial vehicles because the difference on a commercial vehicle, you generally have time frames and set times. And as I said, you're utilizing those vehicles a lot more as well. 

00:11:40 Lorna McAtear 

So. 

00:11:41 Lorna McAtear 

In some respects, vans being later, as long as they benefit from the new technology, well, it's not a problem and I've got a couple more cycles before I can't buy anyway, so why don't I concentrate on the vehicles that I can do and can control? 

00:11:58 Lorna McAtear 

And then help the manufacturers design the vehicles I want in the future. 

00:12:03 Lorna McAtear 

So that is what I do a lot of I work with those manufacturers say there's a problem with that bit. Actually your 12 Volt battery on there is a problem. It's not the battery itself here, it's this bit you need to change that or you need your wiring looms different or you need this ETN which is an electronic power take off. You need that instead so it's. 

00:12:23 Lorna McAtear 

What else can we do to help those manufacturers and learn from the mistakes we made on the cars, learn from what's coming down from the HDTVS and see what we can do on that instead? 

00:12:36 Chris Sass 

When I listen to you speak, if if I were running a fleet, I'd be holding off because it sounds like it's very volatile and changing. So I would be afraid to be buying things. If you're continually building the truck is we're riding in it so to speak. 

00:12:49 Chris Sass 

That would make me nervous to to invest in the new technology. How do you deal with that? 

00:12:55 Lorna McAtear 

And there's a lot of fleet managers who are actually thinking like that, but they're getting caught out with the dev mandate and some of the other bits and pieces. They're getting caught at the back of the queue. And then they haven't learned enough lessons. They haven't got the drivers buy in, they're then falling foul of all the myth busts, the myths that are coming out from the newspapers and. 

00:13:11 Lorna McAtear 

The press because they believe in what's going on in the Doom monger inside rather than actually working on the ones that they can doing the things that they can do and just steadily working through a plan. So they need a fleet, just get a target in place, work towards it because some of that target might not be until 2029. 

00:13:31 Lorna McAtear 

2035 whatever it is and just work your way through. 

00:13:34 Chris Sass 

And you mentioned an interesting part of the equation. It was the human in that equation cause you said you you have to get the people caught up. So we we we went from talking about technology in vehicles to not having the people ready for this help me understand what what that means. 

00:13:45 

MHM. 

00:13:52 Lorna McAtear 

When we took people, you've got your driver, you have your line managers, and then we'll skip a bunch of others, cause it depends how many senior levels you want, but then you go right to the top, don't you? And your execs and you need buying from everybody and you're going to get it at different stages from different people. We cannot get away from the human factor. Some people like change and thrive on it. 

00:14:11 Lorna McAtear 

Others detest it. 

00:14:12 Lorna McAtear 

The passion, and therefore you have to work your way through that first thing and some of the advice I give to other fleet managers out there is get to the execs, get the buying, find out what it is that's motivating your company. Is it that they will have a product to sell as a result of this, in which case that's. 

00:14:28 Lorna McAtear 

Your. 

00:14:28 Lorna McAtear 

Angle in is it that they've got sustainability targets and fines? 

00:14:32 Lorna McAtear 

Go through that angle. You know what is it that is pushing your company to make a decision? What makes it tick? What are its values and work at that? 

00:14:41 Lorna McAtear 

Get your finance director on board, because once you've got them on board, everything else just trickles through. Because if they say no to the money, you're not buying anything anyway. So get that finance director on board. Sanction all the costs that you've got that are coming through. Get your budgets in place for the future and then everything else just trickles its way down. If you've got sustainability teams that you have to report with. 

00:15:01 Lorna McAtear 

Get them on board because they're going to need the details from you and your input, and actually, if you've got cars getting your cars done and your small vans that are the easier to do ones, getting them in helps them tick their boxes and they suddenly become or you become their best friends because you're helping them achieve their targets. 

00:15:18 Lorna McAtear 

Then you've got the drivers. Find the drivers that are really keen because you have got some. You've got some that are really passionate about doing this. Get them on board. Working teams get out there so we rotate A-Team at a time. We don't put two EV's in and then leave a bunch of diesels cause they'll ditch one for the other. They'll go through a preference. So actually do the whole team. 

00:15:38 Lorna McAtear 

But go out there and talk to them. Actually, physically hand over and spend time with them. You get rid of 90% of the myths in that one face to face handover and spending time with them. And then you got that sandwich layer, the line managers. 

00:15:55 Lorna McAtear 

They're actually sometimes the more difficult ones because they've got to change the way they work and that's something that everyone forgets with the fleets. 

00:16:04 Lorna McAtear 

We can't do what we used to do. We might in the future, but right now we can't. So the sooner they accept that and stop going to the same person, that puts their hand up every single time for overtime, they've actually got to do some planning. They've got to do a little bit of thought around the work and this is where it goes all the way back to the points I made at the beginning, which is understand how you use your vehicles. 

00:16:26 Lorna McAtear 

Where they go, where they sleep. 

00:16:29 Lorna McAtear 

Who influences it and what you need to do with it, because there is a solution there, you just have to know what the problem is. 

00:16:37 Niall Riddell 

And for me, the biggest thing that's always changing, you know, is people's perspectives once they've been in an electric vehicle and had that experience. But sometimes getting that person who's a little bit rests and into the vehicle is quite hard. 

00:16:48 Niall Riddell 

But how? How do you handle that early conversation when you turn around? And by the way, we're taking your lovely comfortable diesel away and we're giving you this new fangled technology. Tell me how that experience goes with drivers and what you can do to shape people's first impression. 

00:17:03 Lorna McAtear 

It's an interesting one, and the reason I said that's interesting that I've been doing this for a long time now. I'm not quite sure I can remember because as you said, once you've got enough people in it, it's easier to do. But you'll also know that I'm the kind of person that won't do anything. I don't expect a driver to do, so. I've driven some of those really difficult to do. 

00:17:20 Lorna McAtear 

Vehicles drove a high roof transit from John O'Groats to Land's End, so for those that aren't in the UK, that's literally the top of the country all the way to the opposite end. And and it was great until I got to a few service areas and they've got high restrictions because they didn't want the caravans in, which meant that the van couldn't go in and guess where the charges were. They'd been designed for cars, so they were behind those height restrictions. 

00:17:43 Lorna McAtear 

And it's these things that we took. We learned, we fed them back because yes, we've got difficult drivers that still want to don't want to go on the journey. 

00:17:52 Lorna McAtear 

But we are so early in this journey, the number of drivers you can get in still outweigh the difficult ones. So there is no point forcing someone into a vehicle. They're still doing 40,000 miles, don't have home. 

00:18:05 Lorna McAtear 

Margin can't do anything else when actually if you leave it another five years, the technology will have moved. You'll have the answers. You'll have a better infrastructure. You'll understand the challenges more and therefore their conversion will be easier. Whereas if you force them now, they just they'll kick back, they'll they'll fight you all the way. So there's no point. Don't have a battle that you can't win. It's not worth it. 

00:18:28 Niall Riddell 

And this this point about early in the journey is really interesting because we tend to talk about this adoption curve. You know, you get the the innovators right at the front, the 1st, 2 1/2 percent, then you get your early adopters up to about 1213%, but you as a business now National Grid must be getting some pretty significant late majority into the into. 

00:18:46 Lorna McAtear 

Yeah, we're kind of if you think because we've put in the policies and we are going EV now. 

00:18:53 Lorna McAtear 

I say, Evie, we may use some other decarbonise and tapes in the heavier vehicles, but in theory we are going for net zero at the tailpipe. Let's get my terminology as correct as I. 

00:19:02 Lorna McAtear 

Can get it? 

00:19:05 Lorna McAtear 

We are now entering into that mass, so we've got lots of people know who they're not being given a choice, whereas before, as you said, it was those early adopters, the first ones out of 3000 company cars, we've now got 2000 that are pure electric, they're diesels that are still on fleet of a handful that are washing their way out. They're literally coming to the ends of their lease life and will be. 

00:19:25 Lorna McAtear 

Changed. We do still have some hybrids because we do acknowledge some of the distances we go and the personal circumstances for some of the people just can't quite make it work yet. That will change. Don't send this podcast out to too many of my staff yet, but that will change and and it's just working it through and getting the timing right on it so. 

00:19:45 Lorna McAtear 

It's understanding that journey, but with 2000 in pure Electrics, none of them would come back to me and said I want. 

00:19:54 Lorna McAtear 

Now. 

00:19:55 Lorna McAtear 

So that's the message that then goes around to everybody else. So when they're sitting having their coffees together and somebody says I've got an electric income and they go, yeah, but you've got this on it when you get it or it's not as bad as you think when you go to charge. So the other thing you've got as well as more people get into electric vehicles in a company. 

00:20:14 Lorna McAtear 

Their spouses, other halves, family friends. They start to see what it is as well. So actually you use that as your communication media to help get people into the vehicles because it's easier because they get the real life experience, not the perceive. 

00:20:32 Lorna McAtear 

Press and those that haven't had their bump on a seat in a vehicle experience. They're actually getting the drivers who have done it. Been there, learn, understood, worked their way through it. And and you use them to get that message out. 

00:20:47 Chris Sass 

All right. So we've we've talked a lot about EV's, but you you mentioned alternative fuel types and things earlier in the interview. This is an EV series, but we're an energy. 

00:20:55 Chris Sass 

Podcast. 

00:20:57 Chris Sass 

And some of your unique equipment, I'm wondering if biodiesel or hydrogen or something like that may not be your near term or is everything going to be electrified in your view? Am I going to have? 

00:21:08 Chris Sass 

Unique equipment, that is. 

00:21:09 

Slide. 

00:21:10 Lorna McAtear 

So at risk of upsetting either one side of the fence or the other side of the fence, I'm actually open minded. So when I say I'm open minded, I've always had a mantra in the fleet world and it's always been right vehicle right job. That mantra has now extended to right vehicle, right job right, fuel type, right time now. 

00:21:30 Lorna McAtear 

Biofuels there are several types of biofuels. Some of them mean I have to do a lot of work with the tanks and they'll degrade overtime. So if I don't use it fast enough and it's in a backup generator, then actually it goes off and it's useless. If I use one of the other types, it's classed as a drop in fuel and that one I can use. It's fairly easy and you've got other companies out there, especially on the HDTV. 

00:21:52 Lorna McAtear 

Using it. 

00:21:52 Lorna McAtear 

Already both of those have a finite resource level though, so if we're talking about sustainability, it's not just looking at what's right for you in that vehicle. It's again what is right and what is available holistically across all vehicle types and for other people. I could be totally selfish, couldn't I? I could just do my vehicles and say that's it. I'm just looking after me. 

00:22:13 Lorna McAtear 

But it's what's out there, and some of those biofuels just aren't as sustainable or there isn't enough of it for everybody to go down that route. 

00:22:21 Lorna McAtear 

The other one we're looking at and I am exploring in some cases is hydrogen, but again with hydrogen there isn't enough of it. There's not enough green stuff. 

00:22:30 Lorna McAtear 

Whether you can electrolyze it or not, hydrogen is better if you use it where it is made so that you don't have to go through the shipping side of it, because using ammonia, nitrogen and other methods of carrier in order to move that around is challenging is not as cost effective yet we do know those vehicles are also more expensive than the electric ones. 

00:22:50 Lorna McAtear 

So if you think Fleet Manager's got a headache now trying to electrify, try and do it with the hydrogen infrastructure that doesn't exist yet either. So, but having said all. 

00:23:00 Lorna McAtear 

But if you're in a location where hydrogen is abundant and easy for you to get to, of which there is one or two locations, why wouldn't you do it? So back to my mantra, right vehicle, right job right for your type right time. 

00:23:16 Niall Riddell 

Nice. I like this story. So in that hard to treat ecosystem that stuff that's on the late end of your journey, what are you tackling at the moment to decarbonise what's moving to 0 tailpipe emissions in in the correct corporate range? 

00:23:31 Niall Riddell 

Because I'm conscious that we do see a lot of cars, we've got an increasing number of vans. What? 

00:23:35 Niall Riddell 

About things like 4 by fours. 

00:23:36 Lorna McAtear 

So 4 by fours were challenged. As you can imagine, because it's not the four by four itself, it's what it's used. 

00:23:44 Lorna McAtear 

For. 

00:23:45 Lorna McAtear 

So it toes and the moment you stick anything on an alternative fuel vehicle at the moment that toes, then you degrade its performance. So it's getting that balance right and another one of the words we're often using in the fleet. 

00:23:57 Lorna McAtear 

World is operational efficiency. 

00:23:59 Lorna McAtear 

Whatever it is, we have to have operational efficiency. I can't have something toe in three and a half ton that can only do 2 miles because once it's used up, it's burst of energy. That's it. And we're stuck there. Am I? So it's a very practical option, but I knew that back in 2020 when I put my plan together for 20-30, assuming my 20-30 date was going to stay. 

00:24:21 Lorna McAtear 

And and I knew I wasn't even going to tackle my four by fours until 2027. 

00:24:27 Lorna McAtear 

Because I wasn't expecting anything to come to the market. 

00:24:31 Lorna McAtear 

Doesn't mean I haven't been working with disruptors in the background. Designing vehicles, talking to them, working out what's needed, you know, dual passenger or passenger airbags because we have two main crews. So I can't take one that doesn't have a passenger airbag. So there's all sorts of things in the fleet world we have to consider. 

00:24:51 Lorna McAtear 

And we just keep feeding that back in to the disruptors. Here's more info. Here's more info. So for the last two to three years, I've probably been helping people design, even though I haven't taken any of those vehicles yet. 

00:25:03 Niall Riddell 

And and what's interesting is I'm I'm super aware that you need vehicles that have been. I'll hate this word homologated. 

00:25:08 Lorna McAtear 

I'm obligated. Well done. 

00:25:11 Niall Riddell 

One again, there we go, which means that they have gone through all the tests required to enable them to be, you know, mass produced, Rd. legal, etcetera and that clearly is a challenge when you're getting into the. 

00:25:22 Speaker 1 

These. 

00:25:23 Niall Riddell 

Batch small batch type vehicles. How do you see that evolving over the? 

00:25:27 Niall Riddell 

Next few years. 

00:25:28 Lorna McAtear 

So we've got some of the bigger players coming out now. So once you've got a lot of these earlier early prototypes that are done, you're now moving. So there's some other phrases as well. So you have small type approval, you have individual vehicle approval and then you have whole type approval. So that all the different scales and it's the number of vehicles you are allowed to make under that. 

00:25:47 Lorna McAtear 

Production banner, so to speak, just trying to keep it as easy language as I can without without offending anyone. And then what you have there is when you get into a whole type of proof you're looking at over 1000 vehicles. 

00:25:59 Lorna McAtear 

Now bear in mind I've got 15104 by fours on my fleet in the UK. 

00:26:05 Lorna McAtear 

If you take every utility with roughly those same numbers, it's hard for us to take the smaller ones until you've got further along the line, so we can for trials. Sometimes there are different things we can do, but any disruptor coming in. Of course, if you think, yeah, it's great, even though EMS, when they come out with their brand new vehicle, we got 1000 coming to the UK it's like. 

00:26:25 Lorna McAtear 

Right. They're all gonna go then, aren't they? 

00:26:27 Lorna McAtear 

In. 

00:26:27 Lorna McAtear 

One hit. Yeah. Well, males gonna go out there and buy the whole lot up in the first. 

00:26:30 Lorna McAtear 

Batch. 

00:26:31 Lorna McAtear 

You know, what are you doing for the rest of us kind of thing. So for anyone that doesn't know Roman in the UK has 50,000 vehicles, so it's the. 

00:26:37 Lorna McAtear 

Peacefully. So it's understanding all those different types and what we can do, but four by fours are starting to come through. As I said, I've predicted 2027 anyway through conversations and we're starting to see those changes come out and more mass production and the disruptors having got further through each of their stages of homologation. 

00:26:58 Lorna McAtear 

And road legal testing. 

00:27:00 Chris Sass 

Is there a difference in the performance of the four by fours with the weight, the batteries and anything like that? So do you have to retrain your drivers to handle how to use this 4x4 as opposed to just putting it in low and locking the hubs and going type of thing? 

00:27:14 Lorna McAtear 

So we try to train all of the drivers anyway, because it's just a different style of driving. And yeah, the torque on it as we all know, torque on an electric vehicle is so much better and easier. So in some respects it simplifies what we're doing in others because we do all the training for familiarization on those vehicles anyway, because you've got cranes on there that you have to familiarize them with. 

00:27:35 Lorna McAtear 

You just did the whole thing in one hit again. So you just go back over it all and try and understand what it can and can't do. And I guess one of the other things I forgot with fleet, we've got a lot of plant. So sometimes these vehicles get classed as plant instead of on the road. 

00:27:51 Lorna McAtear 

So everything from your forklift to your ATV, your terrain vehicles and your other ones that have got the chains look like little tanks. So you've got all sorts of different vehicles that go out there as well. 

00:28:04 Lorna McAtear 

No idea. I'm getting those. We'll get there. 

00:28:05 Niall Riddell 

So it's kind of. 

00:28:06 Lorna McAtear 

Eventually. 

00:28:07 Lorna McAtear 

I have faith. 

00:28:08 Niall Riddell 

It's quite incredible that that, yeah, that you've you've got to ultimately persuade manufacturers to get to a point where they can produce everything in electric. We are starting to see some of those more obscure vehicles coming through. 

00:28:21 Niall Riddell 

One of the things I'm really interested in is we're kind of future future forecasting at the moment. You talked about getting some of the last of your car drivers into electric vehicles. What do you think has to change in order to get those last drivers? So this is this is completely different to our normal conversations. We're talking about the beginning and now. 

00:28:40 Niall Riddell 

We're talking about the end. 

00:28:41 Niall Riddell 

You know what has? 

00:28:41 Lorna McAtear 

You've also gone to cars instead of commercials. 

00:28:41 Niall Riddell 

Change to get those large pilots. 

00:28:44 Niall Riddell 

Well, I think it's. 

00:28:45 Niall Riddell 

It's kind of it's kind of easier to understand how the cars because you're so much further down the line. Now what? What do you think has to change for someone who does 50,000 miles a year and doesn't have home charging and all the other challenges they face? 

00:28:48 Niall Riddell 

Get to the end. 

00:28:59 Lorna McAtear 

I think there's a few things if I remember back to National Grid, put in my strategy in place, I got it approved just before we locked down. 

00:29:09 Lorna McAtear 

But part of what I was doing, I had a huge whiteboard next to my desk where we were and where all my teams sat. And on that whiteboard was a list of all the cars coming through, and I'd circled when they were hitting the road, which ones were over 200 miles, and I'd put in there that that was for August. 

00:29:29 Lorna McAtear 

2020 we were expecting that bear in mind we did all that before COVID, so things slipped a little bit. 

00:29:35 Lorna McAtear 

But that was what was coming through, and I'd marked that day and anybody that walked by kind of went what's that for? And I went. That's the tipping point. That's the change that will get people out of some of the vehicles into EV's. Cause 200 miles is now a realistic range. We're now getting to where it's 300 miles in the cars. 

00:29:53 Lorna McAtear 

And we're now getting to where we've got more affordable cars where the price points have really come down in what's happening. So each year that goes by actually that is what is changing. We're not in the position now that we were four years ago and this is one of the other things I say to people, why do I have? 

00:30:09 Lorna McAtear 

Faith that I'm going to get my four by fours. 

00:30:12 Lorna McAtear 

Well, when I started this journey we have. 

00:30:14 Lorna McAtear 

We got. 

00:30:16 Lorna McAtear 

I was gonna say half, but probably we didn't even have 80% of the vehicles that we've got now. It's changing so fast. So I believe they will come and that's one side of it. The other side of it is everybody's now understanding infrastructure and energy and generation. And we've got lots of people who become pros. 

00:30:35 Lorna McAtear 

And for nobody understands what the word prosumer is, because I didn't when I first used it, I had to go and Google it because I was moderating a panel on it. This is where you're both the consumer and you sell a product. So if you think about your home environment and allowing people to use your chargers at home and neighbours and everything else we now buy and sell the own kind of product that we've got. So when you've got more into that, everybody understands what the usage is, what they need. 

00:30:58 Lorna McAtear 

How they go about it. So they're becoming much more informed. 

00:31:02 Lorna McAtear 

So I'm not going to use the Web educator becoming much more informed on what they can and can't do and how. 

00:31:07 Lorna McAtear 

They go about. 

00:31:07 Lorna McAtear 

It, and that's one of the big differences now. And that's just going to replicate into the commercial vehicle world as well. We've already know from all the rallies we do, we all go out and do all this stuff that looking and planning my routes this year because I'm using lots of these difficult to do vehicles. 

00:31:24 Lorna McAtear 

Actually, if I tried that that first year from John Egrets land, I don't think I'd have made it, but I will this year because the amount out there has changed so much and we got so much more confidence in what we can and can't do out there. 

00:31:38 Chris Sass 

Alright, you got confidence, but I assume you have tools as well. Is there software that's adapted to your unique you because you don't just have a van fleet, you don't just have a car fleet, you've got kind of a lot of fleets. So it is there like a tool that you're using to to do all this or other than the white board with circles and miles? 

00:31:49 Lorna McAtear 

There's loads of stuff, and again, when I first started. 

00:31:57 Lorna McAtear 

Do you want the honest answer? 

00:31:59 Chris Sass 

Sure. Now lie to. 

00:32:00 Lorna McAtear 

I'm so I'm so I'm so used to driving EV's, I can't even be bothered to plan anymore. I just get in the car and go and then hope and pray that the first services I go to there'll be one I now. 

00:32:00 Chris Sass 

Me please. 

00:32:09 Lorna McAtear 

Know. 

00:32:09 Lorna McAtear 

Enough of the infrastructure I just get and go, but that's the confidence you get when you've been out for a long time and if you've driven a van and then you go back to your car, you think you're in luxury. You really do because you realize you when you've been in that van. 

00:32:21 Lorna McAtear 

Are now invincible in a car. You can go anywhere in the UK because the distances just don't matter. 

00:32:26 Lorna McAtear 

But to be fair, your point on tools is really valid. There are so many tools out there and they've got better. The accuracy of the data is better and it's so much better as well with the EV cards. The way the legislation change, the fact you can have one card now that does most networks that you don't have to go out there and have empty million different apps on your phone. 

00:32:48 Lorna McAtear 

Has made a huge difference to the ease of using that infrastructure and therefore for people coming in and new, it's easier for them to learn and understand because it's much more similar to what they used to now. 

00:33:03 Niall Riddell 

So we're seeing, we're seeing an evolution in the driver experience. If you take the same question that Chris is posing around software to manage your fleet, how do you see that changing? Because now you've got a a slightly different equation emerging around you know, your optimization of your vehicle types. Are you looking at things like you can love this one vehicle grid? 

00:33:23 Niall Riddell 

Timing and flexibility of charging. How are all these things you know, these modern technologies can affect your your operations. 

00:33:29 Lorna McAtear 

It's all changing and I think you know Chris made a valid point earlier about fleet managers waiting. Yeah, I think there's also a load of fleet managers going, you know what I'm retiring. This is too much like hard work these days. 

00:33:38 Lorna McAtear 

As well, there are so many things coming our way and so many different skill sets, but it's also so exciting and what you've said there, Neil. 

00:33:46 Lorna McAtear 

Going back to that vehicle usage, if you're using a vehicle 24/7, it's just the people you're changing. You're never going to use vehicle to grid because you always want your vehicle charged pointless. If you are one of those fleets that rarely does come back, charges it up and everything else then. 

00:34:00 Lorna McAtear 

Wouldn't you, but fleet managers have so many other headaches when it comes to this, and it's so new for all of us. What do I do if I've got a driver who's been charging up at home, getting me imbursement from me as a company, and then starts plugging it back in and running this kettle off the car? You know, how does that work? How do I manage that one when we're going through all this? So the use of tools and I've. 

00:34:20 Lorna McAtear 

Read an article today which was AI is going to replace the fleet manager. It's no chance you're never going to replace me. Not not a chance. So you know what does it mean? And it's. 

00:34:30 Lorna McAtear 

Yes, there'll be tools that help us with routing, planning, optimization, getting data to prove to the driver that when they think they do 100 miles, actually it's only 60. You know it may take longer because of traffic, but they don't go as well as far as they need and all that kind of stuff. So it's more informative I think and it helps with some of those basic decisions. 

00:34:52 Lorna McAtear 

And putting things in. So that's where I think it will change. 

00:34:57 Niall Riddell 

So. So this for me is super exciting because we've had this conversation a couple of times and every time I have this conversation, I come away energized and having learned more, we've defined fleets, we've covered vehicle types, we've looked at different ways that the challenges are being addressed. And I think what's really I'm really reflecting on is the fact that you've seen the transition and you believe that we'll continue to go on that. 

00:35:18 Niall Riddell 

Transition. If you were going to have a quick shot of making a prediction about 20-4 months time, what might we expect to see changing over the next 24 months? 

00:35:27 Lorna McAtear 

I think we're going to have a lot more debate on the different architectures in. 

00:35:32 Lorna McAtear 

Vehicles and the speed of the charges that we go in, I think there's going to be an awful lot more around DC AC 800 versus 400 and the speeds at which those rapid charges can or can't charge vehicles and which vehicles it goes into. And the reason I think that will all come about is you'll have technology pushing it, but then you'll have fleet managers going, don't. 

00:35:52 Lorna McAtear 

Add that cost onto my vehicle. Thank you very much. I still want to be able to do what I can do so that I think it's going to be a nice interesting dynamic in technology. 

00:36:04 Niall Riddell 

This has been fabulous, Lorna. Thank you ever so much. It's a real pleasure to have had you as a guest on the podcast. 

00:36:09 Lorna McAtear 

You're welcome. 

00:36:11 Chris Sass 

What a great conversation we had today. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please don't forget to subscribe, add comments, likes and follow us on YouTube and we'll see you again next time on the Insider’s Guide To Energy EV series. 

00:36:22 Chris Sass 

Bye for now.