Fleet News Group

Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls talks with Evenergi managing partner Steve Lewis about how rapidly the climate has changed for EV adoption in the last six months, since his in-depth presentation at the AfMA fleet conference in May.

“The thing that's really sparked it is probably led to a degree by the federal government,” said Lewis, referring to the ousting of the Coalition by Labor at the last election and the new leadership’s ambition to accelerate the transition to low-emission transport.

Former 60-Minutes journalist Ray Martin and inventor Matthew Vaughan talk to Fleet News Group's Caroline Falls in this podcast linked here about the revolutionary suspension smoothing Base Air system that Martin reckons is among Australia’s best and biggest inventions — akin he reckons to WiFi, the Black Box, and the Cochlear implant.

“I thought Matthew was just in the long line of these little Aussie inventors in a back shed who changed the world,” said Martin, talking about his impression of the inventor and the air management system that can be fitted to a truck’s suspension for a smoother ride for the driver and the cargo, reducing fatigue and damage.

Martin said he’s followed Vaughan’s journey since meeting him and first hearing about the invention in a coffee shop in Sydney 13 year ago. After years of development and iterations, getting patent protection, and trials with big truck fleets, Base Air was recently officially launched together with news that Paccar Australia — the importer and assembler of Kenworth and DAF trucks — has adopted it into their parts distribution network.

ORYX People’s top directors Kris de Jager and Sharon Henderson talk about the changing role of the fleet manager, the great resignation and moves to attract more women in the transport sector in this Fleet News Group podcast.

Last-mile delivery group ANC’s CEO, Joe Sofra, talks about transitioning his fleet of 1,000 vehicles to electric, and concerns about charging infrastructure, in this Fleet Auto News podcast.

“At the moment my point of anxiety isn't necessarily around being able to source vehicles. My point of anxiety is much more around the supporting infrastructure to charge these vehicles. I'm probably more focused on that at the moment to make sure that we have the supporting infrastructure so we can expand the fleet as fast as we possibly can,” said Sofra in the 25-minute interview.

“I'm a lifelong surfer … an outdoor enthusiast and so the ocean environment has always been in my direct line of sight,” said Jay Collins, US-based senior vice president and general manager of EV and mobility at global fuel card brand WEX Inc.

Collins was speaking to Fleet Auto News’ Caroline Falls from his Portland, Maine, US home for this podcast talking about the big wave developing in EVs, and their role in building for a more sustainable future.

The podcast also features the new US legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act — which includes significant incentives for EV adoption and charging infrastructure.

Fleet News Group talks with leaders at mapping technology specialists HERE Technologies and Hema Maps in this podcast about their location services that help keep drivers on remote roads safe.

Robert Gallagher, HEMA Maps MD: “We're collecting enough data out there to get people into the regions and back home safely.”

Dan Antonello, GM ANZ, HERE Techonologies: “A lot of the products that come out of the content that we collect go into the navigation systems, turn-by-turn instructions for vehicles, but you also see, for your audience in particular, a lot of information going into the fleet telematics.”

“A lot of our customers are looking to do business with people who are net carbon neutral,” Philip Browne, MD of Autorola, Australia, tells Fleet Auto News’ Caroline Falls in this podcast. Browne talks about soaring used car prices, the group’s lean marketing practices of used fleet vehicles, and how they helped the online auctioneer go carbon neutral.

“It's all about being lean, and, and looking at processes to eliminate wasteful, expensive processes and move everything to an online environment ,” said Browne.

A key point of difference between Autorola and competitors is that Autorola doesn’t have a central site for storing and selling used vehicles. It only shifts vehicles from the seller to the buyer, eliminating costs and carbon emissions associated with moving vehicles to an auction site.

In our latest Fleet Auto News podcast we talked to Danielle Lackey, chief legal officer at Motus, a software as a service business for route planning, and accounting for personal use of fleet vehicles, among other things. We talked about the landscape in the United States and the appetite for transport sustainability.

The data captured by Motus from the 300,000 drivers using its system underpins the Internal Revenue Service’s business mileage standard, or the amount that an individual can deduct for business vehicle expenses.

Motus has also captured and analysed emissions data from the myriad various vehicles in its orbit to create carbon emissions reporting products that enables its clients to measure and manage their own sustainability goals.

Max Wang, an architect of the RACV’s multi-model journey planning app Arevo, talks to Fleet News Group’s Caroline Falls for this podcast linked here about MaaS, or mobility as a service, and how it can help fleets meet sustainability goals.

For a lesson 101 on MaaS, Wang, now Senior Product Manager at Intelematics, a pioneer Australian telematics group and a unit of RACV, the royal automobile club of Victoria, said the term MaaS really refers to this idea of making transport as easy, accessible, and sustainable as possible.

Fleet News Group spoke to Balz Eggenberger, Founder of Swiss-based fleet management consultancy Fleetcompetence, about the way fleets are managing the transition to electric vehicles in Europe.

Eggenberger who works with 55 partners in Europe and the US said the pivot to sustainability has brought the top management to the table with fleet management. He talked about being involved in two big projects where general management has set sustainability targets.

The huge swing to EVs in Europe has been propelled by companies setting zero-emission targets for carbon.