How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. That’s the approach EMC is advocating for in its new ZEV readiness assessment tool

Businesses and governments across Canada are starting to see the benefits of electrifying their fleets, but for many electrifying a fleet remains a confusing and daunting prospect.

Higher upfront vehicle costs, charging and operational logistics and even government incentives and tax regulations are very different from diesel-powered fleets.

It’s difficult to know the answers when you don’t know the questions to ask.

That’s where the latest questionnaire developed by the Electric Mobility Canada (EMC) Medium and Heavy-Duty (MHD) Working Group comes in.

Is Your Fleet Ready for ZEVS? An Operational and Financial Assessment asks the questions for fleet owners, looking at operational suitability and financial viability to help them make decisions on how to proceed in electrification.

The 16-page report gives a structured framework while acknowledging that there is no single solution for electrification — every fleet has its own strengths and difficulties, depending on multiple factors including infrastructure, vehicle capability, organizational preparedness and long-term economic feasibility.

“The reason this tool was developed is to help fleet operators do a self-assessment scorecard to identify what are their conditions that make electrification viable today,” says Charlotte Argue, senior manager for sustainable mobility with Electric Mobility Canada, in an interview with Electric Autonomy Canada.

“This helps identify questions that the operator might not have even thought about. Things like, is my site ready, or do I have the right players at the table? Is there an internal champion?”

Operational and financial suitability

Is Your Fleet is divided into two parts.

The first focuses on operational suitability, asking whether a fleet’s vehicles, routes, depots, power supply, systems and organizational capacity can realistically support zero-emission operations.

The second examines financial viability, looking at the mix of capital costs, operating costs, utilization, incentives, financing and cash flow that ultimately determines whether electrification can work economically.

The information in the report was drawn from practical, real-world experiences from more than fifty experts from across the electric transportation ecosystem, including manufacturers, utilities, charging providers, consultants, and fleet operators.

“My best advice is to be data-informed and start somewhere,” Argue says.

“That includes leveraging your data to identify the duty cycles and the applications on what will work with the technology that’s available today, but also data in terms of where am I at, in terms of operational readiness, and who do I need to bring in to the conversation in order to make this project successful?”

Argue says some of the information came from mistakes made by these experts along the way, such as around employee training and power requirements.

“If you’re going to have successful electrification, the operations have to go smoothly as well. It’s not just about getting the site and getting the vehicles,” she says.

Not just about the vehicles

Regardless of the challenges of fleet electrification, Argue is a proponent of forging ahead.

The key is, as is the whole point of this assessment, to be as educated as possible on every facet of electrification, to make the final decisions easier.

Questions in the survey have green, amber and red response ratings, signifying electrification readiness.

But a red answer doesn’t necessarily mean electrification is out of the question.

“The hope is to identify those reds … as something that could impede their electrification project,” says Argue.

“Now they know, let’s start putting this in place, and let’s start moving this red into orange, and the oranges into green. The idea is using this assessment tool to identify where what strategies are needed and what actions they can start taking to start moving those criteria over to green.”