DawsonGroup

Electric avenues

The 2022 Commercial Vehicle Show at the NEC may have been a shadow of its former self, having lost the support of the mainstream truck manufacturers, but it remained a useful showcase for vans and pickups, workshop equipment and support services. This year, a clear theme emerged, as it was impossible to stand in one spot without seeing products and services, new and old, designed or adapted to meet the needs of the burgeoning electric vehicle market. Words and pictures by Colin Barnett and George Barrow

OUT OF HIDING: One of National Highways’ trio of Operation Tramline DAF tractor units, normally seen – or not – in unmarked covert form, made a rare appearance in full police uniform for the duration of the show.

BPW takes power-generating trailer axles to the next level

BPW’s new ePower unit, developed in co-operation with ThermoKing, moves the concept of electricity-generating trailer axles to a new level of sophistication.

Its smart technology allows it to only engage in regenerative charging when needed, with features such as inclinometers to detect when it’s going uphill and switch off to save fuel.

The ePower, only available with disc brakes, incorporates a pair of 9kW motors.

BPW, which now has a manufacturing facility at its UK base in Leicester, is currently conducting trials of the system in advance of commencing deliveries in the final quarter of this year.

Gray & Adams shows off a chilling solution

One of the highlights of the Gray & Adams stand at this year’s show was this distinctive trailer, one of three destined for DawsonGroup. Its Carrier Vector eCool refrigeration has its batteries topped up by an 11kW Valx second axle.

Volta Trucks plays it cool with Carrier

Volta Trucks displayed a nearproduction-ready prototype of its Zero 18-tonne battery electric vehicle to highlight its partnerships with third-party contributors to the programme.

It had announced before the show that Carrier would be its preferred supplier of refrigeration equipment, as shown on the display vehicle, then at the beginning of the show it confirmed that Paneltex would be the provider of choice for ambient box bodies.

Totalkare unveils all-in-one inspection pit

Totalkare has launched a new all-in-one inspection pit with brake tester and wheel play detector.

The TK-BM65 is a plug-andplay galvanised steel inspection pit that comes pre-assembled with its own lighting, hydraulic inspection floor, integrated sump tank, side entrance stairs, safety rails, and optional heating and hydraulic aluminium cover.

Made in Denmark by BM Autoteknik, the TK-BM65 measures just 4,270mm by 2,180mm, with a depth of 1,808mm, and can be installed directly on a sand base without the need for concreting, lowering installation costs and making it possible to remove the pit for reinstallation at another site.

Having a Whale of a time at the NEC

Having made the short journey from its Solihull base, Whale Tankers had the largest concentration of trucks at the show.

As well as an Australianspec eight-wheeler, it showed this eWhale, a 4x2 jetting machine based on a Scania P-Series BEV. The Scania’s specification includes a 60kW power supply to power two electrical PTOs.

The stand truck is a demonstrator, while the first customer vehicle is in build for Coventry City Council.

Kuda Automotive proposes a new theory of Evolution

Kuda Automotive has secured a new Renault T Evolution to act as mobile showroom for its latest products.

These include an expanded range of Mirror Shields, now available for the conventional mirrors on the new DAF XG range as well as for the mirror cameras on DAF and MercedesBenz models.

Other items visible on the Renault include catwalks and side skirts, while the interior features new LED lighting for the storage lockers.

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Van operators working internationally must get an appropriate O-licence from now on Lightweights get heavy

By Charlotte Hunt

New rules that came into force on 21 May mean international van operators will need a standard international goods vehicle O-licence to transport goods for hire or reward in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, unless their vehicle is exempt. So who do the changes apply to?

In short, they will apply to those who: ■ operate vans with a maximum authorised mass over 2.5 tonnes and up to and including 3.5 tonnes; ■ operate vans towing a trailer with a gross train weight over 2.5 tonnes and up to and including 3.5 tonnes; ■ operate cars towing a trailer with a gross train weight over 2.5 tonnes and up to and including 3.5 tonnes.

Operators will not be caught by the changes if they only use their vehicles in the UK or are not transporting goods for ‘hire and reward’. This generally means goods are being carried for or on behalf of someone else, with payment exchanged.

So what do the changes mean for existing and new operators? ■ New operators will need to make an application for a standard international operating licence; ■ existing international operators will need to add the vehicles now brought into scope to their licence; ■ standard national operators will need to submit a variation to become standard international operators; ■ restricted operators will need to submit a major variation to become standard international operators.

Risk of offence

Operating without the correct licence may mean you commit an offence, and existing operators risk receiving a call to public inquiry before the traffic commissioner (TC).

There is also a risk of being prosecuted in other countries.

Existing restricted licence-holders who are applying to vary their licence will need to make sure they have a transport manager in place. This could be an existing employee who has completed or will complete their transport manager certificate of professional competence (CPC), or they could hire an external transport manager.

Existing employees can apply to be temporarily recognised as a transport manager. However, they must have at least 10 years’ experience in managing fleets before 20 August 2020 and must pass their CPC qualification before 21 May 2025 to be able to continue acting in that role.

New and existing operators should be aware of the financial standing changes. These require £8,000 to be available for the first vehicle in the fleet, and for new vehicles in scope (ie vans and cars with trailers), and an additional £800 for each extra vehicle.

Operators must demonstrate this is available throughout the life of the licence and in accordance with the Senior Traffic Commissioner Statutory Document No2.

Further requirements

Operators working outside the country should ensure that their vehicles and drivers have the necessary documents.

Drivers should carry a certified copy of the ‘UK licence for the Community’ – new international operators will need to apply to the DVSA for this.

Depending on the country, drivers may also need to have documents detailing vehicle registrations, specialist approval certificates, permits/licences, insurance documents, a UK sticker, a driving licence, Driver CPC, passport, any international driver permits and health care documents.

The government has published the requirements for international road haulage and it is important operators ensure they are compliant.

Active management

But, most importantly, operators should understand that having an operator licence is more than a piece of paper or a form-filling exercise. It must be actively managed throughout its life to minimise the risk of regulatory action at public inquiry.

If a business depends on running a fleet of vehicles its operator licence is arguably one of its most valuable assets.

An operator’s undertakings – which they promise to observe when being entrusted with the licence – are fundamentally in place to ensure road safety.

Bringing these lighter vehicles into scope internationally will no doubt contribute to making the roads safer, building on the stricter regime already in place for larger vehicles. ■ Charlotte Hunt is a solicitor at

national law firm Weightmans

Fuel prices are going one way

Steve Hobson Editor Motor Transport

The current UK rate of price inflation as measured by the CPI is 9%, the highest for 40 years, and could hit 10% soon. A lot of this increase is down to rises in fuel prices that not only affect motorists when they fill up their cars but also push up prices of just about everything in the shops as hauliers pass on their higher fuel bills.

While fuel is still the highest operating cost for hauliers, vehicle costs make up another substantial chunk of the 155p cost per mile of running an 18-tonne rigid over 80,000 miles a year, as calculated in Motor Transport’s benchmark cost tables in 2021.

That figure is based on a capital cost of £78,000 with a residual value of £12,000 after five years and 230 working days a year, which equates to 350 miles a day.

The cost per mile goes up to 251p based on 40,000 miles or 174 miles a day.

MT hasn’t done the figures yet on what the cost per mile would be for an electric 18-tonner and it is anyone’s guess what the residual value will be on a five-year-old electric vehicle, but the purchase cost will be more like £200,000 and the miles run per day will be a lot lower than the diesel equivalent.

Even assuming an electric truck could be double-shifted, with a realistic range of 100 miles on a single charge, an operator would be lucky to get 174 miles a day, every day.

This is not to say electric vehicles can’t do the job, but rates are going to have increase substantially to cover the lower productivity of a much more expensive truck and that will only add to UK inflation.

Skills are key to driving sector forward

Alistair Lindsay COO Zeus Labs

Renewed efforts seen by the government to address the worsening HGV driver shortage are commendable. The road haulage sector, already plagued by issues before the pandemic, now has to contend with a fuel crisis that has no end in sight plus a growing ‘silver exodus’ of retirees.

According to Statista, this exodus is set to accelerate, with 45% of the UK’s HGV drivers expected to reach retirement age in the next five to 10 years.

These figures are reflected in a recent survey by Zeus Labs involving 40 UK haulage firms, which revealed that 56.6% saw finding drivers as a core reason for delaying growth. Interestingly, 76.6% of them also selected finding new work as the main challenge.

There is no denying that urgent action is needed in attracting and retaining the next generation of HGV drivers, and the new Transport Bill is a welcome first step. But any proposal to veer away from EU licence regulations and open the industry to newly qualified drivers needs to be carefully considered.

Perhaps most importantly, any efforts to entice new recruits should focus on fixing the skills gap. Would-be drivers need improved access to training programmes to obtain critical sector-specific skills safely and in good time.

We also believe it is up to the government to encourage movement by incentivising small and medium-sized firms to take on newly qualified drivers and improving the process for obtaining a licence. Unless we take action to solve this problem, we stand to lose more than 380,000 drivers over the next five years.

Furthermore, supporting smaller owner-operator fleets, which make up 70% of the registered HGV firms in Britain, directly ensures a more resilient and stable nationwide logistics network. This is pivotal if we are to see economic growth.

Zeus Labs is a good example of how to support small to mid-sized haulage firms with its next-generation digital platform. The platform charges no fees to hauliers, finds new work for them and pays them within three days, instead of 60 to 90 days. This directly benefits the smaller hauliers, who can manage fuel costs better and take more time to invest in training new drivers and growing their fleets.

However, when it comes to incentivising, educating, funding and helping ensure fast training of new drivers, we cannot help directly. With the road haulage industry at such an important crossroads, we hope any new legislation takes heed of the bigger picture and has the industry’s long-term interests at heart.

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Buying electric vehicles such as Freightliner’s eCascadia tractor unit will not be cheap, but fortunately, commercial vehicle finance organisations are planning some handy ways around this, writes Steve Banner

Purchasing power

Funding the acquisition of electric trucks by operators looks set to be a challenge, but it is one the nance arms of manufacturers and independent leasing and contract hire companies are going to have to get to grips with – and sooner rather than later.

The key difficulty they all face is that calculating the monthly rate a business that signs up to an operating lease will have to pay means knowing what the residual value of the vehicle will be in, say, six or seven years’ time.

With an electric truck that remains largely unknown, because it depends on how long its battery will last and how much a replacement will cost.

Dawsongroup MD John Fletcher says: “It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, and you don’t really know where you’re going to get to until you start the journey.

If the battery doesn’t last the course then the truck is going to end up being unfit for purpose.

“Will the battery last for seven years? Will it last for 10 years? We don’t know – but what we do know is that a diesel truck can keep working for 20 years or more.”

And while some of the major urban centres may penalise any diesel truck that does not meet Euro-6, there are large areas of the country where such penalties do not apply.

Twin option

One option could be to offer two leases, Fletcher suggests – one for the battery and one for the rest of the vehicle. It is an arrangement not dissimilar to the approach taken by the aviation industry, he points out, which treats airliners’ engines differently to the rest of the aircraft.

It is also an approach pursued by some manufacturers when electric vans were first introduced. Unfortunately it fell down because residual value specialists were not prepared to predict the secondhand value of a light commercial vehicle without a battery in it.

Asset Alliance Group director of asset management

TEVVA GOES DOWN LEASING ROUTE

Tevva is working with Novuna (formerly Hitachi) to offer its electric vehicles on leases rather than asking operators to buy them outright. The lower running costs should provide an immediate saving.

“You might pay a premium of say £500 on the lease cost, but you might save £525,” says sales and marketing director David Thackray. “Therefore it can become cash-positive from day one. It all depends on the mileage. If you only do 20 miles a day, you’re going to struggle. You’re not going to save any money and you’re not going to make a big dent in the climate position. If you do 80 or 90 miles a day, that’s when you get into the sweet spot.”

Leasing also removes any residual value uncertainty from the operator because Tevva and the leasing company have worked together to quantify and define these. On a 7.5-tonne truck, 2,000 cycles should equate to about 200,000 miles – roughly what a truck would do in eight years at 100 miles per day.

“As yet, there are no commercial vehicle batteries that are eight years old with a price,” says Thackray. “Everybody is making their assumptions and judgments. A battery that has done 2,000 cycles may have 80% of its new capacity so while it’s not an 80kWh battery, it’s still 64kWh.

“That’s still a big and very useful battery and probably has a value. The rate of depletion continues at a constant level by all the projections. Its second life might be in static storage for uninterruptible power supplies or for buffering vehicle charging.

“My personal view is that if you want a second-hand battery electric vehicle in five years’ time, supply and demand will say they will be expensive because they’ll be as scarce as hen’s teeth.”

BATTERY LIFE

While there is as yet no certainty about how long batteries will last in electric trucks or what they will cost to replace, greater clarity is gradually emerging.

US manufacturer Proterra states that the batteries it is supplying to Volta for use in its Zero rigid are designed to deliver over 4,000 recharge cycles over 10 years without significant degradation.

Scania suggests that manufacturers and their dealers may start to replace individual battery modules over the next few years if they have suffered faults or become degraded, obviating the need to swap the entire battery pack prematurely.

Nor would it be surprising if a market in reconditioned exchange battery packs begins to emerge, working along the same lines as the existing market for exchange engines and gearboxes.

Questions over the durability of electric models have been addressed by Daimler Trucks in the US.

It reports that its new 320hp to 470hp Freightliner eCascadia tractor unit has successfully completed over a million miles of testing in daily operations with customers. Now in series production, the newcomer offers a typical range of up to 230 miles between recharges says Daimler.

On this side of the Atlantic, Mercedes-Benz Trucks is willing to offer a six-year contract hire with maintenance deal on its electric trucks, according to eConsultancy manager James Venables (pictured below). “We can give customers a residual value,” he says.

It can do so with confidence, he adds, because of the amount of experience it has had with battery-electric models; Fuso’s eCanter went into operation in the UK with Wincanton, DPD and Hovis more than four years ago.

“We warrant the batteries for six years, and we can certainly see the possibility of giving our electric vehicles a second life after six years,” he says, adding that funding agreements that extend beyond six years are a possibility too.

CHARGING AHEAD:

Northgate is acquiring 350 Mercedes-Benz eVito vans this year Marc Mellon suggests that truck makers will have to be prepared to shoulder much of the risk themselves. “Without any credible historic information to work with at present, they will need to play a big part in discussions about electric vehicle residuals until confidence grows in the used market,” he observes.

He doubts, however, that the answer will be to write electric trucks down to zero: “I don’t see this happening as they will always be worth something to somebody.”

Even if a battery is no longer suitable for propelling a Even if a battery is no longer suitable for propelling a vehicle, it can still be used for static energy vehicle, it can still be used for static energy storage. be a less attractive bet for operators planning to acquire

Higher payments

Electric models still command a higher front-end price than their diesel counterparts, which in the absence of firm residuals is likely to result in higher monthly payments.

Observes Mellon: “I therefore foresee operators asking for lease terms to be extended to keep monthly costs down as much as

CHICKEN AND EGG: battery life is key, says John Fletcher

possible. Bear in mind that there are large infrastructure costs accompanying the switch to electric that they will also have to fund.

“I don’t think that we can talk about a typical lease duration though until we have more data on how well the technology copes with the demands of the many different sectors of the transport industry.”

While leasing rates may be potentially higher than those charged for the use of a diesel truck, at least fleets will pay less for the power their electric trucks consume.

Furthermore, the maintenance element of a contract hire with maintenance deal should cost less too. Or should it?

Don’t bank on it, says Mellon: “We’re in the early days of heavy truck electric technology, so there’s a lot of work to be done to understand the operating costs of components to see how viable long-term maintenance deals are.” That includes seeing how well electric motors stand up to high mileages, he adds.

“There are fewer moving parts in an electric motor compared with a combustion engine, but the replacement costs are far higher,” he observes. “Battery life is also going to play a major part in any maintenance discussion, and we’re still unsure how reliable batteries are going to be.”

Technology advance

A further concern is the speed at which truck technology is advancing, says Fletcher. An electric truck that is cutting-edge today may look like a museum piece in a few short years – and what will that do to its second-hand value?

Mellon suggests that hire purchase will undoubtedly be a less attractive bet for operators planning to acquire electric trucks than some form of lease, at least until some of these uncertainties are clarified.

If they opt for HP then they will end up owning the asset once all the payments are made; but what will the asset be worth? They may be understandably wary of taking the risk, and will prefer leasing companies to shoulder it instead. Fleets may be happier about acquiring electric vehicles without the cushion of a manufacturer buy-back if they are big enough to withstand any losses that may be made, and ➜ 22

RESIDUALS RISK: Marc Mellon says leases will be popular

have an established mechanism they already use for disposing of diesel models.

Big spenders

With a 50,000-strong fleet, light commercial rental giant Northgate is certainly big enough. It is acquiring 350 Mercedes-Benz eVito vans this year, and will ultimately dispose of them through its Van Monster retail chain. Fitted with a 66kWh battery pack, the version of eVito Northgate has chosen should be good for up to 162 miles between recharges, according to Mercedes.

Says Northgate sales and marketing director Neil McCrossan: “An analysis of mileage data from our customers’ fleets shows that this is more than practical for their daily usage.”

Despite Fletcher’s reservations, Dawsongroup is quoting leasing rates for electric trucks now, he says. Their greater front-end cost and all the other variables mean the rates are higher than for diesels.

“We know we’ve got to get involved, and that there are likely to be failures as well as successes,” he observes. “We have to recognise that we may not get it right first time around.

“We have to stand the risk though. After all, that is why leasing companies exist.” ■

ON THE BUSES

One approach hauliers going electric may wish to consider is opting for a TaaS (Truck as a Service) package. It is a route already being advocated by industry newcomer Volta.

It involves rolling the entire cost of acquiring a battery vehicle – the truck, its maintenance including replacement batteries and the installation and management of the charging infrastructure – into a single monthly payment. The customer gets the use of any assets involved, but not their ownership, thereby reducing capital expenditure at a time when revenue may be under pressure.

It is an option already being embraced by bus fleets. With the help of hefty subsidies they now have considerably more experience of operating electric vehicles – including models powered by hydrogen fuel cells – than hauliers.

National Express will be putting over 130 electric BYD ADL Enviro400EV double-deckers into service in Coventry from early next year onwards. It will be doing so in partnership with Zenobe, which is already providing the charging infrastructure and batteries for 29 Enviro400EVs first deployed by National Express in Coventry and Birmingham in 2020.

The latest deal involves Zenobe providing ETaaS (Electric Transportation as a Service) to National Express. It is financing and managing a full turnkey solution that includes the new vehicles, replacement batteries, charging facilities and the supporting grid infrastructure, and software to manage the charging. The agreement also give batteries a second life at the bus garage when they are eventually removed from the vehicles. As part of the package, ADL will supply Zenobe and National Express with all the spares required for planned preventive maintenance for the first 16 years.

Zenobe co-founder and director Steven Meersman says: “By retaining ownership of the vehicles and taking on the risk of switching to zero-emission, we’re giving National Express the use of an electric fleet without the hassle of owning one.”

Some of the cost of the project is being offset with money from the DfT.

Asset Alliance’s Mellon sounds a note of caution about applying such a model to the haulage industry, however. “TaaS is definitely a viable option, but the huge set-up costs involved would massively increase the credit risk to lenders,” he observes. They might be wary of taking that risk given a recent report from accountants Price Bailey, which states that nearly a third of Britain’s hauliers are at imminent risk of financial collapse.

“There’s been a big impact on credit scores in recent times and we don’t know how quickly this will improve or what is going to happen in the future,” he says.

Adds Dawsongroup’s Fletcher: “TaaS is a nice label to put on it, but a lot of what it describes is what we’ve been doing for years, and I wouldn’t rule out getting involved in the provision of infrastructure. It’s not our core business, but we may have to look at it as an enabler for certain customers.”