Georgia Lomas:
You’re listening to the Journey to Zero podcast hosted by Alltruck Zero. If you want to stay ahead of the game and find out more about the very latest green truck technology, or you’re looking for hints and tips on how to decarbonise your own fleet, then this is the place for you. In this podcast, we’ll be sitting down with the thought leaders who are guiding the way on the journey we’re all on as we work to decarbonise the transport industry. So thank you, Josh, for joining us on the Journey to Zero podcast. We have Josh Spencer from Ford and Slater joining us today. Josh, could you give us an introduction to yourself and your role at Ford and Slater, please?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah. Hi, Georgia, thank you very much, firstly for having me. Really pleased to be able to share with you what we’re doing. And I do say we because I’m one part of quite a large system and a lot of amazing people involved and a lot of fabulous experience within the business who I’ll explain a little bit more about, of course, but, yeah, really glad to be able to represent the business today and talk to you a little bit about what we’re doing. Yeah. I’m Josh Spencer. I’m the EV manager for Ford and Slater DAF. So Ford and Slater are the largest privately owned DAF dealer group in the UK. We have 16 sites from Leicester all the way across to Norwich in the east and up to Stockton in the north. Within those businesses, we also have a bodybuilder and also a fleet services arm. And we employ somewhere in the region now of around 1000 people. So it’s grown hugely from what was a single-site business in the early 1990s, but as I say, still privately owned. The owners of the business are fabulous and very active within the business as directors. And to be honest, they culturally are driving all of this. I’m incredibly grateful to be able to do what I do with them and they are absolutely supportive of our transition to becoming a net zero economy, net zero country, hopefully net zero planet. That’s quite a nice thing to be able to say as a business. I think there’s a lot of awful lot of kind of people talk about greenwashing and virtue signalling, there probably is an element of that in different parts of industry, but actually I feel very grateful to be able to work for people who do genuinely believe in it.
Georgia Lomas:
That’s great. Would you like to tell our listeners a bit more about your role at Ford and Slater?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, of course. So, given how relatively new and fresh electric vehicles are for the truck industry and for our customers, I find myself becoming involved quite gratefully so in lots of different projects. So been working on the electric truck part of the sort of projects for probably two years now, but also involved in creating the or helping to create the infrastructure on our sites in terms of electric vehicle charges to support our customers businesses and support their electric truck purchases, and also then moving into how we electrify more of our own fleet. So there’s been an awful lot of work gone in even before I joined the business four years ago to electrify the business’s company car fleet. So being completely transparent, obviously that’s had a lot of advantages commercially, but also it has provided us with huge CO2 reductions as a business, which has actually allowed us to make further investments and be able to borrow on. Very favourable terms to be able to increase the size of the business and actually make worthwhile investments and also be able to provide the Daft dealer network with the right level of network support. So without having done those things, we wouldn’t have to do it. But I’m here helping us drive even further forward. So we’re looking at how we move our electric or our parts delivery fleet to electric vehicles and how we move our courtesy vehicle fleet to electric vehicles. So what we want is for customers who invest in electric trucks to feel electric truck touch points at every part of their interaction with the business. Really.
Georgia Lomas:
Josh, you mentioned how the business has expanded recently. What’s going on there, and how are you supporting customers?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, two great questions, Georgia. So for us, I’ll answer the question twofold. I think we’ve invested in several businesses within the last two years, so we expanded the footprint to include first Chesterfield in 2021, and then also we purchased the X Sevens household businesses in 2022, which are located at Leeds, Sheffield, Stockton, and Bertley. So those northern kind of region sites, we’ve been continual investing in those since purchase, and we’re currently looking at how we can end up relocating two of those sites, generally because of lease constraints, but also develop the sites that we have already to facilitate, again, a better level of service for customers in that region. I guess the second part of the question and answering that is more around our infrastructure and what we’re putting in place for customers. So we’re really keen to work way ahead of anything that the manufacturer expects. And clearly, we want to create an environment where customers can bring their electric vehicles to us for servicing and maintenance and also rely upon having those vehicles fully charged whilst they’re with us. We see that as an incredibly important part of where we fit into customers charging plans. It may only be once every six weeks, but customers need vehicles to be available from the moment they pick the vehicles up. They need them to be productive and out working. So we see that as being an important part of how we support our customers in their own journey to net zero.
Georgia Lomas:
Sounds great. Are there any other ways that Ford and Slater are helping and supporting customers? Looking to move over to potentially a DAF electric vehicle.
Josh Spencer:
Yeah. So really importantly for us is around the customers being able to experience the vehicle. So we’ve conducted a successful trialing program at an 18 ton or 19 ton weight range with the DAFF LF Electric that’s been very successful in customer trials and has led to customer orders because they’ve been able to prove the product within their own operation. We’re also expanding that out within the next six months. So we’ll be having four new generation DAF Electric vehicles, and those will be maximum range vehicles, so they’ll be able to achieve real world ranges of up to 250 miles. Again, for us, this is about customers being able to prove that they can utilise those vehicles successfully within their duty cycle. So customers being able to do that will give them, hopefully, the confidence to be able to invest and spend what is an awfully large amount on the vehicles, but at the same time, knowing that they’re going to be able to make huge operational savings far outweighing the initial outlay on the vehicles in the future.
Georgia Lomas:
Great. So how are the DAF Electric trials going with your customers currently?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, so in terms of trials, it’s an interesting one. Again, we have a part to play as a dealer group. There’s also a national picture here. So where we’ve been trialing a vehicle with our customers, there’s also been a very much larger trial with national customers, and that’s been in the form of the Battery Electric truck trial, which has been funded by central government that has involved 20 LF electrics, again at 19 tons. So those have been operating very successfully with the NHS supply chain and also with local government, local council procurement organisations. So over the last 18 months, those vehicles have been in service, and we’ve all been gaining a huge amount of useful information. There’s been a fantastic partnership between DAF and Senex, and Senex have been providing the data and the modeling in terms of helping industry understand how these vehicles can be utilised and exactly what they’re capable of, whilst, again, giving an insight into real world depot charging infrastructure. There have been heavy duty DC charging infrastructure at a lot of those sites. So that’s been a useful insight for businesses to be able to recognise. Well, when we come to the next steps, how’s that going to need to.
Georgia Lomas:
Look, have there been any challenges that have highlighted from these customer trials?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of challenges, there are always challenges. Again, because of how sort of infant this whole project has been, I’ve been able to support customers getting the vehicles into their businesses have always come up against some sort of challenge, whether that be in terms of acceptance or whether that be in terms of charging infrastructure or duty cycle, we’ve seen them all. But in fairness, that’s been a huge learning opportunity for us as a business. Been learning opportunities for our customers and there aren’t many things now that we don’t know how to overcome or we haven’t got the network of people within our business and within our supply partners who can help provide a solution to that. So it’s been a hugely useful exercise and as we move into having multiple demonstrators operating with multiple customers at any one time, that will only become more useful to us and actually allow us to be that much more effective.
Georgia Lomas:
What are the reasons people or businesses are reluctant to move to electric trucks?
Josh Spencer:
I think undoubtedly it’s important to address the elephant in the room straight away, which is capital costs. A lot of customers see these vehicles as being too expensive. I think possibly even a year ago they might have been right. But the vehicles are absolutely moving in a very positive direction in terms of capital cost equally, where energy prices have now stabilised and are in fact reducing. We’ve seen an announcement in the press today, the fact is that these vehicles become very very cheap to run. So the vehicles have a high capital cost outlay. Absolutely. My method for overcoming those objections is to help operators speak again with the right partners. So I’m brokering my first deal at the moment where my hope is that a static energy supplier or static energy installation supplier will pre buy vehicles batteries. So that kind of fills the gap from a residual value conversation, which actually could be a really useful opportunity to further the useful effectiveness of those batteries from a CO2 savings perspective and also save the customer some of that capital cost outlay at the beginning. I think yes, clearly infrastructure is also a challenge to people. So I take a very very different approach to probably most salespeople, I guess when it comes to selling electric vehicles, where I realized that actually a customer overcoming charging challenges is the key to unlocking my own success. So we’ve taken customers to go and see existing infrastructure sites where there is already DC charging infrastructure for multiples of vehicles and we also then are able to put those customers in contact with experts, well respected people within the industry who can create those charging solutions for them in cost effective ways. We are using those contacts and working very closely with those contacts to install our own infrastructure. And actually the costs on that infrastructure probably in the last two years has halved in price. So things are improving all the time and I do foresee them improving further still. I think the more volume becomes necessary in the industry, the more you end up with multiple charges being installed on sites, the costs per unit and per kilowatt of energy transmission becomes exponentially cheaper the more you do. So this will improve things going forward and that infrastructure is a long term investment for people. The battery warranties on the trucks are six years, so notionally people might run them to six years. And in reality, a charging infrastructure provision is possibly a 20 year investment. And actually at that point in high duty cycle operations, you can easily recoup the cost of the charging infrastructure in the first six years and actually then you’re into huge savings for the next 1214 however many years you then run on your next two batches of vehicles. And at which point, of course, the capital cost on those vehicles will have come down further still. So the people who are early adopting and where we are able to help people see that there are huge savings to be made, they will absolutely be the people to save the most money. And you’ve seen that in other low carbon initiatives, people being early adopters of solar panel technology, people being early adopters of even Tesla Model S with lifetime supercharging, where those vehicles still have a huge residual value in the marketplace compared to other vehicles of later generations.
Georgia Lomas:
In the UK. Do we have a suitable electric infrastructure to power the electrification of HGVs? If not, what needs to happen for us to get to this point in the UK.
Josh Spencer:
We are adding more renewable energy, more energy capacity, in fact, than at any time in our history. So in the last three consecutive quarters, the average amount of wind power in the UK has increased by 1 GW on average. Now, when you consider that the UK’s average consumption needs are 30 gigawatts, to have added an average of 10% of our overall energy capacity requirements. And yes, of course, that will increase as electrification increases, but to have added that much capacity in the last nine months is unprecedented at a very high level. That’s the first sort of stage of that conversation to get out of the way, because actually the answer is that the infrastructure in terms of grid capacity and grid supply is going in at a rate that we’ve never seen before on a more local level. To answer the question as to the electrification of HGVs, there are huge projects underway and in the final stages of sign off for 350 kilowatt charging infrastructure, which on DAF Electric vehicles will add 150 miles of range in an hour. So 45 minutes break recharging is absolutely achievable when you look at that infrastructure and where that’s going to be positioned, you’re going to have 350 kilowatt charging infrastructure going into truck spaces, in service areas, which clearly at the moment is absolutely necessary. There isn’t really any of that. And at the moment you’d have to very awkwardly park in a car park, which just doesn’t fit with any of our health and safety mandates at all for safe vehicle interaction. So as that moves forward, and as those projects are realised, the important part to recognise is that DAF Electrics, they have real world ranges of 250 miles. And the important thing for us all to remember is that HTVs are limited to 56 miles an hour. And so in four and a half hours, which they’re legally then obliged to stop for a taco break, they cannot travel more than 250 miles. So I would say it’s almost unnecessary to have to carry more than 500 kilowatt hours of usable capacity on a vehicle. Once you hit that magic number, it then becomes about recharging quite quickly, where you can recharge how useful that is too, because we’re mandated by Tachograph legislation. So even in reality, there are very few duty cycles which will actually do 56 miles an hour for four and a half hours straight. So you’re going to have some residual capacity left within the vehicle at that point. And actually, if you’re then topping up with 350 kilowatt hours of energy in an hour, suddenly you’re in a position where you’ve got at least 150 miles more of range to be able to utilise. So suddenly you’re unlocking the potential for 400 miles shifts, which is a heavy duty cycle, and then if you go back to sites and recharge those vehicles for a couple of hours, they’re fresh, ready for the next shift. So double shifting with those kinds of vehicles is absolutely achievable as well. But businesses recognise that they can already install the infrastructure on their sites today, a lot more cheaply, it has to be said, than they would have to with biome-thane plants, production facilities, hydrogen production facilities. The cost per mile of energy added to vehicles is exponentially lower than with the alternatives. The biggest blocker has undoubtedly been the public infrastructure. And my hope, because I do hope on a lot of these things, my hope is that actually there can be a very transparent conversation around businesses as to the infrastructure that goes in. There are 450,000 trucks on UK roads, and in a good year, the truck industry sells 40,000 vehicles. So even if every truck converts today, and we only sell electric trucks from today onwards, which we’re clearly not going to, that is still a ten year change, which is in reality, going to be a 15 to 20 year change. So the right actions are being taken by now, and it is really pleasing to be able to say it, the right actions are being taken right now to put that infrastructure in place to facilitate the transition. And the time is absolutely now, because even five years later, and that would cause a huge problem to that. But a lot of this is very achievable. Once there’s that charging infrastructure in place, and yes, it will improve again. So probably within five years, you’ll see the productionisation of megawatt charging and yes, you’ll see larger capacity batteries, which are actually lighter than today’s contemporary models, which, of course, will make the whole conversation easier as well.
Georgia Lomas:
Yeah, I suppose now is a good time for you to let us know a bit more about the DAF electric truck range.
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, absolutely. So the range has been slowly but surely improving over the last three years, really. Now, I’ve already mentioned DAF’s LF electric, and yesterday there were press releases going out around the new DAF XB, so that’s the replacement for the LF, an XB sorry, electric being released at the same time as XB diesel is a very important part of the conversation. The new DAF XB will be available at twelve to 19 tons. That will offer class leading ranges. It will also offer multispeed transmissions, which will improve efficiency, undoubtedly, on those products. When we move above 19 tons and above two axles, we move into Das new generation heavy truck vehicles. So you’ve got the XD electric and the XF electric. So those vehicles are designed from the ground up as electric vehicles. As with the new XB, they’re designed to offer, as I mentioned, that up to a real world 250 miles of range. They package the latest ZF dual motor, multispeed in chassis motor system. Those motors deliver class leading efficiency, they also deliver class leading power and torque. And they pair extremely well with our partnered lithium ferrophosphate batteries. The pole product range is powered by lithium ferrophosphate, so we don’t have any nickel, manganese or cobalt products within the range. And this chemistry lends itself highly effectively to recyclability reuse in battery storage projects, as I’ve already alluded to. And so we’ve got some really exciting things to be able to offer the industry. And whilst in the past we haven’t been commercially sharp enough, it’s absolutely fair to say today we are absolutely here, open business, open for orders, and we are working on the vehicles are commercially viable anyway, but we’re looking at being the most competitive electric truck brand in the UK.
Georgia Lomas:
That’s great. So it will be good to explore. And I know you mentioned the batteries here, but what else sets the DAF trucks apart from the competitors options?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, it’s a really good question, Georgia. So, DAF Electric set apart from other manufacturers because of its multi speed transmissions, again working with the best suppliers in the marketplace. In ZF, we’re also uniquely positioned because we’re offering new generation DAF Cabs as part of that electric product package. So it’s something I very often leave out of the initial conversation, because we’re offering that product with diesel anyway. It’s been out in the marketplace for two years. They offer class leading driver comfort, but also class leading direct vision scores for London, and also general vulnerable road user safety. With the introduction of the general safety regulations too, next year, the vehicles are already being produced in a fully compliant state for that. So you’ve got all of the technological introduced equipment, which is a complete followover from the diesel range. The other aspect to the electric product is that essentially, we want them to feel and drive and have all of the same controls as a diesel vehicle. So where our trial vehicles have been particularly successful so far is in fleets where drivers have been able to get out of a diesel Daft the day before straight into an electric daft and just be able to crack on with business as usual. We have vehicles which will cover 80% of duty cycles in the UK. Now, the average 19 ton vehicle in the UK only travels 100 miles a day, and the average larger truck only travels 200 miles a day. So in reality, yes, there will always be long distance applications, but again, tacograph legislation. Drivers hours create huge advantages for us in this space and it’s really important not to over package products because no operator wants to be carrying dead weight around with them.
Georgia Lomas:
So what kind of advantages are there for the drivers of these new DAF electric trucks?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, so for drivers of electric trucks in general, but also especially with DAF products, we see a lot of the advantages that you see with electric cars. So they don’t have to spend time waiting to fuel their vehicles. As soon as they can get onto a charger, they can leave the vehicle, the vehicle looks after its own charging needs and they come back to it when it’s finished. That actually saves people time when they reframe how to charge vehicles. From a driver comfort perspective, the vehicles are a lot quieter in operation, so you see improved levels, well, reduced levels of fatigue, driver fatigue, and also you see numerous driveline benefits. So drivers who traditionally get very frustrated with automated gearboxes and the delay when trying to pull out from roundabouts or from traffic lights, drive uptake is instantaneous. In an electric vehicle, acceleration, especially to 30 miles an hour, say, for inner city operations, is at twice the speed of equivalent diesel vehicles. The regenerative braking functions on the vehicles allow for an anticipatory driver to, in essence, use a one pedal operation for their vehicles. And, of course, at that point, they’re saving a huge amount of brake wear and they’re recuperating energy back into the batteries to extend their range even further.
Georgia Lomas:
Fantastic. In your opinion, what needs to happen for us to meet the UK’s proposed 2035 ban on diesel vehicles at 26 ton and below?
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question and the answer is as many of these are multifaceted. So in reality, there needs to be action at all levels. So central government driven action, but also local government and local zero emission zone driven action to drive operator uptake and compliance. But also, clearly, the manufacturers have a part to play as well in terms of scaling up production capacity and reducing cost base and therefore prices to customers. Clearly, the energy industry has a role to play in being easy to work with, easy to provide grid connections and also commercially minded agreements, because what we do find still regionally across the UK, not all of the grid infrastructure providers are the same. We have fabulous relationships with some, strange relationships with others, very commercially sharp agreements with some, poor agreements with others, from people who do not recognise yet the truck industry to be what will become a huge customer form. And actually where we’re having our most success at the moment is with grid providers who really do take this seriously and recognise that truck operators will become industrial users, will be able to have great commercial relationships with them. But only if they come to the party and help them put the infrastructure in and make these things easy to do. Not even necessarily financially, but actually help get grid infrastructure connections in quickly. Make sure that these things don’t end up rolling on for an infinite period of time or an unknown period of time because that does not support operators in terms of being able to invest in their fleets.
Georgia Lomas:
So what advice would you give to somebody who is looking to electrify their fleet?
Josh Spencer:
It’s an interesting question because I think the important part is do research, do independent research away from the mass press media, look scientifically, take data from manufacturers both of charging infrastructure and of trucks, look at building relationships and finding people who are knowledgeable in the space and who can give you answers with confidence and professionalism. I think there is a huge skills shortage and vacuum not just in the truck industry, but in the whole motor industry for electrically savvy people, people who understand charging infrastructure, people who understand how vehicles need to interact and what vehicle needs are. I think there is a huge lack of that kind of level of knowledge and clearly I’m obviously here to support with that. But at the same time there are other people out there. Undoubtedly I’m not the only person doing this, although clearly we’re in a position where at Ford and Slater we do want to be people’s principal partner for trucks. We want to be there to support all levels of their business. That goes for the charging infrastructure, that goes for scope three emissions for delivery of parts, that goes for provision of the actual vehicles. And we’re there really to help also support them with introductions to the right partners. Because partnerships on this kind of thing are so important. We’re very transparent. We always talk in real world ranges. We always talk about how those products solve problems for those people’s businesses and don’t probably think there’s enough of that at times. So the advice would be get the right advice, speak to the right people, go away and understand from technical sources people who are willing to give support. There is a lot of publicly available information out there if you’re willing to look for it and understand the wider picture of what you’re going to become involved in.
Georgia Lomas:
What other exciting plans are on the horizon? Ford and Slater?
Josh Spencer:
So we have lots going on. We are in the middle of 180 kilowatt DC infrastructure upgrades for a number of our dealer sites. And there will be more to come because we’ll look at investing in new build sites probably within the next five years. And at that point, any new build site will come with 180 kilowatt charging infrastructure there, ready for servicing our customers requirements. I think the business recognises that as this ramps up, we definitely have a role to play in terms of being there as part of a charging solution provider, possibly charging maintenance provider. There are ways in which we want to be there to be able to offer services to customers, some of which we haven’t even realised yet. It may be that we end up becoming able to support our customers with their charging, infrastructure, servicing and provision needs just depending on how the whole industry evolves and how all of that’s provisioned for we also recognise that as electric vehicles require less and less maintenance, we clearly want to add effective, commercially viable revenue streams to our business. And also, we have a fabulous team of, I mentioned, almost 1000 people, very technically able, very understanding of the DAF product and how to work with DAF. And actually, there absolutely should be the opportunity to retrain those people in the next ten to 15 years should the need arise for helping us provide support to our customers. So, really exciting time. Probably don’t know some of the answers yet, which is also exciting because there are always opportunities for us to think differently, do differently, and support our customers in different ways.
Georgia Lomas:
Yeah, it sounds like Ford and Slater are fully embracing this, which is super exciting. So I just want to say thanks, Josh, for joining us and spreading some really interesting and useful information for our customers. So thank you very much for your time, Josh.
Josh Spencer:
Yeah, Georgia no, it’s been a pleasure. And thanks ever so much for allowing me the time to be able to talk to you. It’s been great.
Georgia Lomas:
Thank you.