Jess Bala, General Motors new managing director for Australia and New Zealand talks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about the US car company’s plans to bring the Cadillac brand down under, starting with the electric powered luxury SUV Lyriq in 2024.

“The Cadillac brand, globally is going through a very big transformation right now to an all EV portfolio which we will achieve by the end of the decade in 2030,” said Bala, adding, “And when you look at what is happening in Australia and New Zealand from an EV transformation standpoint, and how tech savvy our customers are, it just feels like the perfect time to introduce the Cadillac brand and bring this next generation of EV vehicles down under.”

Fleet News podcast host Caroline Falls talks with Collin Jennings, head of government relations and advocacy at the Motor Traders’ Association of NSW about training up the automotive workforce in Australia to meet the challenge of the increasing prevalence of electric vehicles, particularly for mechanics.

“In, Australia, just in mechanics — and this is excluding areas like auto electricians and body repairers and tow truck drivers — there’s just over 116,000 employed in motor mechanics. EVs are a different system, they're a different vehicle, and they require different skills,” said Jennings.

In this Fleet News Group podcast with host Caroline Falls, Dave Sanders, co-founder of Bestrane, talks about the escalation in interest in sustainable transport solutions and how his company which has eliminating waste at its heart helps transport and logistics groups.

“If I look at Origin Energy, for example, who are right in the crosshairs of the sustainability issue. Right now, they're in an industry that is struggling to understand what it means to be sustainable in supplying gas … From a fleet perspective, they've got lots of vehicles running around providing a service to a lot of Australia that doesn't have a great alternative right now; that may not be the case in the future. So from a sustainability perspective, they're trying to understand how can we do more with a minimum fleet necessary. And that's really the sort of services that Bestrane provide, not only on a one- time basis, but more importantly, over a much longer period of time.”

Sanders said conversations about improving a company’s sustainability have reached board level now. 

Lex Forsyth, CEO and co-founder of Janus Electric, an Australian startup that converts diesel engine prime movers to battery electric, talks about xxxx and xxxx in this edition of the Fleet News Group podcast.

Janus Electric was founded in 2020 when co-founders Lex Forsyth and Bevan Dooley tested an idea to convert a diesel prime mover to a battery electric vehicle.

“We thought, well, let's give this a go and take an old prime mover, which was 10 years old at the time and get a rolling prototype,” said NSW central coast based Forsyth.

A few busy years later, trucks number 17 and 18 are being built at the Janus Electric facility and they have orders for another 100 or so. Some 44 people work there.

In this Fleet News Group podcast, host Caroline Falls talks with Dickson Leow, General Manager at IM group, and also of its unit Infinitev, which saves spent electric vehicle batteries from landfill. 

The interview was just a day after Leow presented at the inaugural Australian Battery Recycling and Manufacturing Summit.

Mo Abbas, strategy and marketing executive at last-mile delivery group ANC Delivers, announced plans on this week’s Fleet News Group podcast with host Caroline Falls for an initiative to accelerate Australian fleets’ transition to electric vehicles.

ANC and partners including Fleet News Group, LDV Australia, Evie Networks and CarBon, will launch the campaign on World EV Day — on Saturday, September 9. 

The campaign — Take the Pledge — is aimed at getting organisations to pledge publicly their intentions on how many vehicles in their fleets they will switch to electric powertrains.

“We're launching a nationwide campaign to encourage companies across Australia and in fact further abroad to take the pledge and commit to adding zero emission vehicles to their fleet, so that we can support sustainable transport practices,” said Abbas, adding, “What we are trying to achieve is galvanise a commitment to an energy transition, one that's tangible, and that's backed by a hard commitment by a specific endpoint.”

ANC is committing to 100 electric vehicles by the end of 2025. It already has about 20, including a couple of three-wheeled tuk tuks, in its fleet of more than 1,000 vans and trucks nationwide.

Fleet News Group podcast, where host Caroline Falls talks about the intersection of fleet and sustainability introduces Heather Bone, the director ESG — environment, social and governance, ostensibly chief sustainability officer at Team Global Express.

Bone is a regular on the speaker and panel circuit at fleet transport, and sustainability conferences. 

Team Global Express is making a name for itself as a leader in the transition for a greener lower emissions fleet. It emerged out of the Japan Post Toll Group when the unit was hived off to a private equity group Allegro Funds in September 2021. It rebadged itself from Toll Global Express to Team Global Express, still the team at TSG.

Liz Yeaman, founder of NZ based transport consultancy Retyna, talks to Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about how she participated in NZ’s transformation to EVs almost 20 years ago, the upcoming Electro Mobility Summit in NZ she will be chairing next month, and the urgent need to adopt the technology we have in the face of climate change crises.

Prior to setting up the consultancy in 2018 Yeaman worked for 22 years at the EECA, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Latterly there she was general manager of transport and responsible for leading the government authority’s electric vehicle program.

She started working on EV projects at EECA as early as 2007.

Paul Fox, co-founder of EVIE Networks, builder of Australia’s fast charging network, talks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about the exponential growth of electrification infrastructure, enthusiasm for electric vehicles in Australia and the shortage of them here and around the world.

Among EVIE’s projects is, with support of ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the public network of 42 stations on an intercity network stretching from Adelaide, in South Australia, to Cairns, in far north Queensland. This charging network is designed to service and be affordable for work vehicles.

EVIE also has a fleet services unit to supply charging infrastructure at company depots and other commercial locations including shopping centres and tourism resorts.

Adrian Givoye, General Manager at RedBook Australia, a unit of carsales.com.au, talked with Fleet News Group’s podcast host Caroline Falls about residual values. Givoye stepped into the podcast studio at the Australasian Fleet Managers Association conference after giving one of the most interesting talks, covering the subject every fleet manager cares about.