Price parity between electric vehicles and traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles is “just over the horizon” in Australia, and this will be a catalyst for many local governments to move to Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the medium-term future.
This is the view of Paul Sinclair, the business development manager for Intelematics, speaking at a webinar for local government representatives late last month.
Presenting at the webinar, ‘How Local Governments Can Drive an Environmentally Sustainable Fleet Management Strategy‘, Sinclair said that for those organisations which had deferred purchasing EVs due to cost, “it should be easier to prove that EVs will very soon be economically feasible.”
EV uptake status
A poll taken during the webinar, which had more than 100 participants, found that 38% said their organisations currently had no EVs in their fleet, while 32% put the percentage at between 1% and 10%.
A second poll showed that, within five years, 29% of participants expected the number of EVs within their fleets would grow to make up between 31% and 50% of their fleets.
A third poll found that 56% of participants said their organisations had a net-zero emissions target by 2050, and Paul Sinclair said that in achieving this target, “EVs are a low hanging fruit.” This is because EVs, unlike other net-zero emission measures, require lower infrastructure investments and timeframes and can significantly reduce the 20% emissions transport is responsible for.
Leading by example
Moreland City Council in Victoria is a leader in EV adoption, introducing EV trials in 2012 and made its first EV purchase in 2013. Moreland also installed its first fast EV charger in 2013, the second such installation in Australia.
Dr Paul Swift, the council’s Zero Carbon Technical Lead, told the webinar that under a new fleet policy adopted in 2018, Moreland had a policy that prioritised the purchase of EVs.
The council joined the Melbourne Renewable Energy Project in 2019, and now 100% of the power for the chargers is sourced from renewables.
“It’s much easier to argue for sustainability if the electricity you are providing is renewable,” Dr Swift said.
Today, Moreland has 26 EVs, which comprise 36% of its fleet, and has 16 chargers, of which 11 are for public use.
The Brunswick charging hub can charge four cars at one time, does 1400 charging sessions each month and, said, Swift is the “busiest Chargefox charging hub in Australia.”
Challenges in transitioning to EVs
Paul Sinclair said EV adoption was a “very easy way to show your constituents that you are making progress” in the area of sustainability.
On the implementation of EVs, Sinclair acknowledged that local government’s “have a business to run” and that EVs create some upheaval. As such, Intelematics has created solutions that made the transition as seamless as possible and limited the disruption to daily operations.
“So when the time comes that EVs are run of the mill vehicles in your fleet, you are not in a transition phase having to deal with different sets of technology,” said Sinclair.
He said EVs were very different to ICE vehicles in that they had a smaller number of moving parts, at around 100 compared to 2000 in an ICE vehicle, which made a difference in the task of collecting data from the vehicle.
“EVs are going to face different issues of vehicle health and what is reported from the components,” said Sinclair.
The biggest fear of EV adoption was “range anxiety”. For that reason, there needed to be a major focus on charging locations, and delivering information on their availability through a smartphone app was an essential response.
Another option was to introduce charging at home. This presented as a “major component in overcoming range anxiety” and requires accurate and fair systems in place to rebate people for the power they used to charge work vehicles.
Transitioning to an EV fleet?
Watch the webinar recording here.
