For organisations planning to introduce electric vehicles, Charlie McIntyre from Origin Energy has a simple recommendation: start with a trial.
Rather than attempting a large-scale transition immediately, McIntyre believes fleet operators should use data to identify suitable vehicles, introduce EVs into real-world operations and build organisational confidence before scaling.
Speaking at Everything Electric Sydney during a panel featuring supplier sponsors of the Fleet News Group Awards, McIntyre said electrification was as much about change management as vehicles and charging infrastructure.
Pick the right vehicles first
“You can’t just go out there and purchase a bunch of electric vehicles and install chargers,” McIntyre said.
“You’ve got to be very, very strategic in the vehicles that you choose.”
A take-home vehicle travelling less than 200 kilometres a day, for example, could provide an easier starting point than an asset with unpredictable utilisation and high daily kilometres.
That means analysing how vehicles are currently being used before developing the transition plan.
Origin’s approach includes assessing fuel card information where telematics data isn’t available to understand travel patterns and shortlist potential vehicles.
Electrification is a confidence game
Technical suitability is only one part of the transition.
“I think the transition to electric is as much a confidence game as it is an operational game,” McIntyre said.
A successful trial gives drivers, fleet managers, executives and other stakeholders an opportunity to understand how EVs operate without committing the entire organisation to a new operating model.
Origin’s experience in this area began with its own fleet.
McIntyre explained that Origin’s EV fleet business developed after the organisation experienced the challenges involved in transitioning its own vehicles.
The lessons extended beyond selecting an EV and installing a charger. Infrastructure, driver behaviour and organisational change all needed to be considered.
That led Origin towards what McIntyre described as a “trial first approach”.
Test the difficult use cases
Interestingly, McIntyre doesn’t believe fleets should limit trials to applications where success is virtually guaranteed.
While selecting appropriate vehicles is important, he also suggested testing some of the more challenging applications.
“Once you’ve proven your hardest test case, the rest becomes a lot easier,” he said.
That might include employees taking vehicles home and relying on residential charging rather than simply putting an EV into a depot where charging can be tightly controlled.
Successfully testing those scenarios can give an organisation the confidence to expand electrification to a larger proportion of the fleet.
Learn before you scale
EV trials shouldn’t simply demonstrate that an electric vehicle can complete the required kilometres.
They can help fleets understand charging behaviour, driver acceptance, reimbursement, operational downtime and the support processes required around the vehicle.
Once those lessons have been learned on a small scale, the organisation can incorporate them into a broader transition strategy.
For fleet managers being asked to electrify over the next 12 months, McIntyre’s recommendation was straightforward.
“Start by getting cars into your fleet,” he said.
Then use the experience to build the confidence, data and internal support needed to scale.
