Episode 10: Liz Allan and Paul Kirby - How electric vans and trucks will change in years to come.

so today on electric solution i have got paul kirby who is is director from v essentials but also commercial director at the v cafe on very much a fan of the cafe and your news casts on a friday morning absolutely love watching the

ah

kind of the vibrancy nd fun that you have is just amazing so thank you ever so much for joining me today paul

well it's a pleasure and if you picked up anything from the v cafe i do love the sound of my own voice so it's

we

always nice to talk

yeah

particularly about our subject today electric vans right that's that's going to be exciting

it's just just it's such a journey for me i am learning so much on a daily basis i feel like at my age i'm in my fifties so i just feel like a span still and i love it absolutely love it

i think it keeps us young because in my fifties also and every day is a school day i didn't do very well at school and i didn't like schoolbut

m

i feel like i'm back at school almost on a daily basis so listen we're all learning we're all only just a few steps ahead of each other in different subjects and one will be ahead of us and one thing and one will be behind us in another that's the exciting thing right we can all learn

and the innovation that's happening

oh

at the moment it's just mind blowing

it really

to me

is

you

m

know like i say just start off with by giving everybody a bit of your background and how you got into the van industry and especially into of electric vans because you

yeah

are has electric van man aren't you

i am i am and it's evolved over the years but it sort of feels like it wasn't an accident i mean i got into the commercial vehicle sector back in two thousand and three stroke four and in two thousand and four i drove the first one of the first ever electric sprinters that was available you know was being run around germany

oh

in two thousand and four it was full of batteries had the payload of a bag of crisp so you couldn't get

yeah

much on it top speed of forty miles an hour and it would go about forty miles and all the batteries were in the in the load area of the of the van so you know thank goodness things have come on a long way since then but so and then i was involved in the launch of the elv in two thousand and eight around that sort of time there was the mode vehicle and the smith's electric vehicle and just they were there in my poriferal vision but i didn't take them very seriously and

m

two thousand twelve we saw you know is an m v two hundred and then the persia and the citron came out and ann my leasing role they started to come on my they are about two thousand fifteen sixteen

m

then you know we became members of the v one hundred as least planing we're taking this more and more seriously and then i went to be the head of strategy v strategy for panorama leaving lease plan but that was really exciting i did some cars don't tell anybody but i did

oh

a few

no

cars

not

back

oh

then and help develop the strategy both for cars and bands but what i recognized in the mark place was there was nobody really grasping the nettle of solving the issue of vans and

m

we really needed to have a voice in the market place both government level with the lobbyists but also with the fleets and the leasing companies everybody a voice

m

of vans and that is what i decided i would become a job on a stick basically

that's what i always say the same but that's probably cause i'm from yorkshire

uh

sorry to anybody

h

who's from yorkshire but you know what we're a bit like

yeah

so you have got a real spark about you i've got to say you know i've heard you i've seen you on your website you know and i've seen you on the v cafe and just kind of the the way that you explain things and you're just so engaging you

oh

know kind of during these sessions i am a bit a fan girl i did say to you

yes

earlier girl

but thank you

is amazing

it's exciting what's going on in the market place what you know i love i'm actually one of these people that love change a lot of people are fraid of change and don't like changing to enjoy change i leaped into this role because i enjoy change and i don't want to be doing the same thing so i

yeah

get my energy one from talking to people so that's part of it and to through joying change and this whole transitional thing what's not to get excited about for that point but i also get excited about the humble van too because it's like you've heard the story haven't you that you give boy a fish and he eats for a day if you give

m

a boy a rod he feeds himself and his family for ever long the rod stays working well that's what

ah

a man is about it's not a car gets you for me to be it's a tool within your business that drives performance and gives you value and helps your customers and does so many different things what's not to get cited about in that context

so go on tell me tell me what you're driving i mean are are you able to tell me what you're driving at the moment

so i'm

another

it's not a van at the moment but i am getting i'm getting one of the vans that is relatively new in the market place i'll have for a couple of weeks in a short space of time recently drove the v w i d buzz cargo which is now on my electric

s

grand man tube channel but

that's i sought yes exactly

yeah but i'm actually driving a nero that's my my normal day today vehicle or other vehicle is zoe so we're fully wedded to this transit and to v we thought it would be inappropriate to be in anything else so my wife has adopted it and you know we're in it together and we're going to be dem stating the value and the simplicity moving to electric although that's not too over

yeah

simplify the challenges that the van market faces

yeah so so how is the kind of the van and the truck market moving how well is it moving towards electric

m so

how is who are the early adoptors in the sector

so what we're seeing is it's the bigger fleet right so there are some companies some smaller companies so our own sam clark was a pioneer ally in an electric delivery company so new cargo he he built that business from scratch focused on cargo bites at first and then got electric delivery vans in the n v hundred and i think probably

oh

the persia partner at the time

oh

and delivered you know electrically around london there was another company little company called hive that just focused the small business is focused on their local area delivering in a sustainable and an efficient way with zero emission so there's some great small companies out there kind of really delivering in an

m

electric fashion but predominantly what we're seeing is

yeah

big companies like the rural mail

a

mighty d p d m and a lot of companies like that that are going on mass so you know what we've heard from the rue mailrecently is they'll have five thousand electric vans by i think it's either the end of this year mid next year d p d will be three thousand

yeah

mighty will be up there at two and a half three thousand centre of course well known to saying they have the whole nine thousand fleet done by i think the end twenty twenty five or those supply of vehicles may be causing them a problem so we're

why

seeing some big successes but we're also seeing quite a few challenges along the way as well and you know there was a good selection of vehicle available now so many many more use cases are being solved by electric vehicles even down

m

to towing now you know with the vac daily daily coming

m

on they're going to be able to tow it three and a half tons which is the first time that that's been able to happen and

right

also taking significant power off so vans are well known for being able to do work at the roadside from thee the vehicle itself but that meant it had to run

m

the dese engine two and a half thousand rebs or thereabouts for long periods of time to drive neumatic equipment now we're going to be able to take power off the vehicle and do that same job in a zero mission fashion so there's lot of really good stuff happening

that's a lot happening then isn't it so

yeah

so because of my i suppose like i say i'm quite naive when it comes to use of fans and kind of probably said to you for that we don't have a v t part of this podcast is actually to try and understand that it's educating myself and other people with regards to the choices and you know what we can do to kind of to get there

yeah

i suppose you know i was i was talking to somebody earlier about about kind of the charging hubs how how do you manage a charging hub when it comes to vans and trucks even what how can how can a vanaretruactually charge and how long does it take

well really great questions but i just want to come back to something you said there about looking to educate yourself and others you know that is the most

m

important thing in this market at the moment because whilst you know i just there's a load of electric vans that were available you do need to understand what those differences are in those nuances are before you can really

a

make the leap and what i didn't really say was what's happened it's surprising over the last couple of years in particular is the growth in the truck sector so you know

hm

what we're seeing is seven and a half twelve sixteen eighteen twenty six ton trucks are now becoming electrified you know some great new brands on the market in tver and volta but of course the main stays of an macedies bends and scan involve all getting involved were also seeing some collaboration between the truck companies as well which is really pretty impressive particularly around charging

oh wow

so to come on to your point about charging it isn't easy that's the bottom line because what we've got to do is get a lot of power certainly in the truck world so if you go into the truck world you've got six hundred four hundred kill our batteries well that's five hezlers right there you know

my

all

god

needing charging at the same time in one go

yeah

and that's a big amount of power you may or you may not know that power can be quite constrained in certain

m

depots the all mail are experiencing this first hand and you've got to find

yeah

a way of getting power into

yeah

the spot that you need it and it's not always easy and that's what the rapid charge fund is around as a big fund called rapid charge fund and the hundred and fifty million pounds that people well the great is using to deploy energy into the right places particularly around

m

motor way service areas but the strategic road network is a whole

yeah

and that is really important to recognize because if you just think i can just take an electric van or an electric truck out there somewhere there is charging for me it's not always that easy and it really isn't always that easy

m m

in an ideal

hm

world you have control over charging charging at home you know for private people like myself you have that ability to charge at home

m

and that's you know an ideal scenario both for cars and van so if you can bring your van home you're a small business owner and you bring your vehicle home at night and charge it or you park et at the front of your building and charge it thou the day either way if you can charge your vehicle easily and regularly then you're in heaven but all the time your vehicle is out on the road and then when you get home you're in the seventh floor flat how are you then

yeah

going to charge where you got to rely on the public network and what we're seeing

es

is that the public network and vans are not quite fitting together perfectly just at the minute there are some challenges around that public perception council perception of vans operating within a particular area and some of those companies that i've named you know big parcel companies in particular coming under some fire but we need to understand their full business model before we kind of get critical around

my

why why they charging on the public network

but people are very good at misinformation travels kind of bad word of mouth travels so much quicker than

yes

the positive word of mouth doesn't it and

absolutely

then all you've got is this kind of knock on effect of of chinese whispers that actually was

eh

never right in the first place and it gets even you know it kind of moves down and just

it's

just

less

gets

and

out

less

of hand

white

doesn't it yeah absolutely just it's what it's it's kind of miss truth but actually our untruth but then

yeah

it's just even more water down isn't

yeah

it and worse

i think at the beginning they're probably well meant and they probably be are based around some fact but by the time we've got to the end

oh

of the chinese whisper

yeah

we're giving something complete you different out but we have seen that and you know we've probably all seen the pictures on twitter or or even linked in you know is getting drawn into this of you know a truck part a cross six bays which

yah

how else arethey're going to charge i'm sorry but they can't do it any of the way and then you know the parcel van parked a test o site or you know

yeah

another another parcel am parked in a council site you know where it says no vans but what are we supposed to do

i think

we need a network that's

yeah

efficient active for vans

and actually it's inclusive it's being it's being inclusive i talk about inclusion for people but it's inclusion for people driving these vehicles as well isn't it

yeah people driving the vehicles and the vehicle types themselves we need every every we need everything to be fit for purpose so you know i'm

m

a big advocate of what motivility operations and charge safe are doing around accessibility standards for the the charge point network but but also charge safe have said well paul what what does the van requirement look like can we assess these

yeah

charge points for van yes you

m

know let's understand what is the accessibility like is there a height restriction is there just a lack of space in which we can park the vehicle in the first place you know we could ask the question would it be suitable for trucks but we know the answer for that

oh

because it just wouldn't be you can't put seven and a half or sixteen or an eighteen ton vehicle into the same vehicle as as vans and cars vans and cars

oh

and cave historically shared

different

space but i don't think they're going to be able

m

to for charging going forward because

m

there is this conflict amount of time taken you know the urgency around van charging versus car charging and even the

yeah

speed of charging all of these things affect how were and navigate it

so do you think over time and i'm going to just put this as an example that

yeah

batteries are going to reduce in size because if you think about so my mobile phone here i've got it

hm

an i phone well and if you think

a

about you know the original car phone in invar to commers for example

ah

and oh my god yeah my old

sally

i had in the nineties like the early nineties this manager of mine he lived down south but i was in halifax and

m

he used to go you know i'm going to ring you on the car phone and

yeah

get it out the car and just like the side it was like bigger than a suit case nearly wasn't it you know

yeah

and it's kind of like you think about that and i used to so excited bringing me on the car phone

yeah

oh my god and this battery you know was just huge

yeah

so so what length of time do you think it's going to i mean i don't i'm not sure about a technology but what time scale do you think it's going to be before it all starts getting that

brilliant

bit

question

smaller

really really good question because what i think we we our default setting is what's available today and will

m

it work and we base forever on today rather

yes

than going actually tomorrow there might be some innovation and i had a chat with a guy from d p d actually packed up his transit van at the charge point on i said oh

a

you know how is it i talked to everybody every person were in a van at a charge point i talked to them you

but yeah

what was it like and he said well the van is great he said he said i'm not sure the range is quite there yet he said but you know with the development in battery technology it will be able to do five hundred miles before we know it and i was like okay it might not be able to do five hundred miles i love the ambition that he demonstrated he demonstrated an understanding that actually technology is moving at a good rate of knots and the understanding also that we need to have is that

no

on a daily basis most vans

m

of doing less than a hundred miles of magic probably less than eighty on

m

on average now there are course exceptions and you know we don't just kind of paint the whole picture with one brush but the the battery technology will get better and is getting better so we were already got examples in china of of batteries being able to receive two and three hundred miles within five minutes you know really high speed and smaller batteries you know sort of denser more flexible importantly for the commercial vehicle to lighter battery so this is already

yeah

happening it's just

m

not here in the main stream

m

yet and what we've got to remember is that the main stream manufacturer like for the stalantist

yeah

group as like citron persia box they typically king on life cycles of seven to eleven years and trucks are sort of

m

ten to fifteen

hm

years you know but what we'll see is a lot more development around batteries and batteries will get smaller and there start coming in and we'll get additional payload and we'll get quicker speeds for charging and they'll go further so you know battery technology i think over the next excuse me over the next couple of years well we'll get much much better and we'll see some developments i don't know how quickly they'll get into the commercial vehicles that we're

so at the moment then what is there how much weight is a battery putting

yes

on to say you know kind of like a regular transit van

yeah

how much obviously you've got a battery instead of an engine what i don't understan i don't know about that way differential you know to me

it's a really good question so there's a couple of good examples of things that i know about so i know that the sprinter meseli'sbeen sprinter l two two would normally have a payload of twelve hundred kilos or thereabouts in

no

its electric version it has a payload of less than eight hundred kilos so

i

batteries are significantly heavier than their associated engines and things like that so what

m

we've got is a situation where we're losing payload by losing payload three and a half tons that is but losing payload at three and a half tons as a gross vehicle weight or the maximum of vehicle can weigh we we're losing

m

payload but the government have made a dispensation to allow vehicles to operate up to four point two five tons if they're alternatively fueled battery electric

okay

vehicles and so therefore

yes

you can actually operate these vehicles and get mo pay load but i haven't answered your question so the best way of answering your question is to give the example of the vocal or the stalantis product so fifty killer hour batter gives you a payload of twelve hundred kilos in that van if

hm

you go for the seventy five killer our battery is a bigger battery you can go further you can go about an extra fifty miles of abou lose two hundred kilos in payload

okay

so you're

okay

arguably saying that twenty five killer hours is equivalent to two hundred kilos in terms of weight difference between

m

the one and the other

m

you know so we know that that the batteries are significantly heavier and we're having to make a compromise that we've never had to make before so if you a bigger engine with the deal vehicle just order the bigger engine

ah

didn't really make much difference in terms of pay load unless you went

m

for a completely different type of engine like went from a four

oh

celinda to v six which which you could do but now if you want to go further you can carry less if you want

yes

to carry more you've got to travel less so it's a compromise

yeah

that we've never had to make before but now fleet operators need to consider that as well

that makes it a little bit more complex but it's just like you say

m

it's the thinking about it time it's kind of like education isn't it education

is

to fleet operators

absolutely and that's that's why it's really important that manufacture surface this because we don't always do that you know we're not always completely forthright and it's not that manufactures are trying to hide anything i don't think i hope but it's

hm

it's that they don't think of the knock on effect of the different options that are available in the fleet space so i think manufactures just need to be a bit clever because we're all people everybody s and

a

it's just that the manufacture were forcing them to say it you need to be telling us exactly what's coming down the pipe and how you know how it dresses the challenges and what do we need to think about that's different now

m

we're not getting enough of that

okay so how can you help companies in general what is it that that you you can do to help these companies in general if they're looking at electric an or truck adoption what

yeah

can you do to help them

so when i set up the company v essentials i wanted to focus on three things so consultancy in terms of me operating with a company to understand where they are today to properly ask

hm

all the right questions of the board we've got a whole list whole plata of new people need to be around the table

m

as stake holders when we're making these decisions we need to think about the landlord how long is our lease who else in terms

m

of facilities and you know do we need to dig up ground in terms of the charge points and have we got enough power

yes

so many so many different people that will have an opinion we definitely need the finance guy in the room that they can go actually we're gonna have to pay more up front but actually the cost of operating the vehicle is a lot less so

yes

you know from a financial point of view we ned we need the best brains in the room on that as well so we've got a different group of stake holders so that's number one and as a consultant that's what i would do bring those stake holders together and then we'd kind of talk through the vehicles and how they operate and charging and you know look at maybe telematic data and stuff like that bring it all to the table and then make good decisions because we've got the right information in the roo when

yeah

there in that list

yeah

and then really help them make good decisions about the vehicle the way they drive it you know

m

if you drive it an electric vehicle badly you're going to use all the energy up so don't do that you know well help with training or we do training on two different levels and i've used the word we there because we do this in the cafe as well so the v cafe is also a part of this training process in terms of its education education and training are kind of similar education is just putting the information out there training is helping land that information with individuals with creative

i

products and ways of doing things and looking people in the eye and saying right come

and supporting

on

them knowing that you're there to support them as well isn't it

exactly so so training and then coaching so i worked with dealer groups to help the dealers understand the vehicles and also how to portray that so through and then that brings me on media as well so the so you got the consultency you got the training in the media is about i worked for some of the manufacturers helping them bring real world information about their calls and celebrate how you're can operate them and promote these different things so

m

be really blooming stubborn as well

ah

but you know

yeah

we need to have some good strong conversations to say this is the way it needs to be done now let's let's all

so

get on board the best way and give people reasons to get on board you know the climate quality health all of these things need to be

it's

surface

just very different isn't it

yeah

no because it's we've been through massive changes over the last few years anyway but this is their livelihoods isn't it this this is their this is their life and they've if they've always driven avanoratruck in a specific way then

yeah

it's a different way to drive it and you've i learn again but you know we've got that's the way like you say it's it's about the one and the why the wine and the who

m

and how isn't it

yeah

so so i think i think what you're doing with f what you're doing personally is you know it's ground breaking it it's brilliant it's kind of bringing it to everybody that needs to learn about it

yeah

so to me that's what's needed

yeah and i you mentioned a word we haven't touched on too much but innovation having an eye on what's on the horizon

m

and you know we're blessed with that much time you know a bit more time to be able to talk to people because people want to talk to us around that innovation piece so you know i'm i feel really privileged to have spent a bit of time with volta trucks and teavertrucks you know looking first hand at these new ways delivering goods and services and a completely different approach around the cab in the volta truck it's exciting to c spent time with

m

a vico coming to market with towing and getting power of people don't have that time right they've got busy jobs they don't have that information

m

coming to them because this information comes to us now because we're the cafe people want to say we want you to know about our latest innovation you know big charging hubs that are portable you know they can be dumped in a car park and you can just plug it in these

yeah

things are exciting the way that solar can work with batteries all of this

yeah

information comes in and we've got to get it out there and that's our job

yeah

you know were privileged to see innovation first hand and some of it will work some of it won't but we get to

i

see

like

it

axis b h s

yeah

you know

innately

some some will lead the way

good

some will kind of like you know kind of fall behind a little bit actually

yeah

the moment there's so much of it going on i

yeah

think what you're doing is kind of in a way i'm trying to do this a little bit on this podcast is trying to engage and educate and bring it together in a sort of like a way that people kind of happy to hear it

yeah

you know and and it more so so yeah it's brilliant so if people want to get hold of you paul i mean obviously you are you

ah

are very much a big part

m

on you obviously on the v cafe but on linked in as well on social

yes

media where else can people find you

well i think people are trying not to find me i think that's probably

uh

you know

h

how do we turn him off

m

where's the switch

yeah

but

not

like

true

you say i can be it's funny when the vanity labels came out and linked in you know you can choose you might not know this but you can sort of choose how you appear on the page unlinked in and so i of course went paul kirby you know that's how i want to be linked in forward slashed paul kirby and they said oh paul kirby is already gone and i was like how rude and then they said but the paul kirby is available

uh

the paul kirby

h

so that will be me then

yeah

so linked in i'm forward linked in forward slash

dan

the paul

paul

kirby

corby

i'm a electric van man on youtube please subscribe and like and do all of those good things i have a website e v essentials i always think maybe i should make the website the same as the youtube anyway there we go v essentials

oh

the business name and you can get me there but paul had electric van and dot com is my email address and you know i suppose the clues in the name there and yeah all my contact details are on linked in actually i'm one of those unusual people that when you click contact in for you actually get contact info

that i know i think i might be like that too

walking of innovation

my sunday

right ivan

yeah

forward

we may

thinking

not i need to look at that forward slash though because i don't think i've got any of that i'm not

oh

sure i will

you've

have to

got to you've

now

got to be vlizallen right that's what

yeah

you're goin to be yeah

bless you well listen it's been lovely to speak to you i really really appreciate your coming on and i can say if everybody wants anybody wants to contact you there's some brilliant places to come please just tune into them ten o'clock on a friday morning

yes davy

on

kept

tube v cafe or on linked in you'll see them coming up live on linked in

yeah

i actually drove yourself slightly parted this morning because i actually had you on on you tube and linked in because i was waiting for you to come up live on both and then you were on both and i was like i don't know where to look

well if you're listening to this before december the fourteenth twenty twenty two then we've got our monthly webandwe'e gonna be talking about well being running up to christmas so i think it's really important but liz as been a real pleasure to be on on this podcast with you i love that you're asking the important question and enabling us to surface information that will help in the transition and accelerating the transition two electric vans trucks and cars too as well

listen thank you

m

much so i'm going to say good bye now thank you everybody i shall see you next time and thank you

everybody

paul by bye

by

bye