All Commentary articles – Page 2

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    Commentary

    Long and winding road to net zero

    2023-11-01T06:28:00Z

    Various discussions over the past few weeks have got us pondering whether we should be concerned with the rate of progress the industry is making on its transition to the net zero nirvana. There is a huge amount of investment going into developing new trucks ...

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    Commentary

    How can we counter the resistance to Net Zero?

    2023-10-27T09:30:00Z

    This week’s commentary is penned by Jamie Sands, Group Operational Support and Systems Manager at Welch’s Transport, raising concerns about the industry’s apparent ambivalence to the climate crisis. 

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    Commentary

    Zero Emmision Road Freight Demonstration (ZERFD) programme a big opportunity for industry

    2023-10-24T09:49:00Z By Renault Trucks

    In the week the UK Government announced the £200m funding for the zero emission truck and infrastructure demonstrations, Andy Salter cast his eye over the plans

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    Commentary

    One year on and the journey has only just begun

    2023-10-18T12:50:00Z

    This week we’re celebrating the first birthday of Freight Carbon Zero and we thought we’d focus the commentary to reflect on the past 12 months and take a peek at what’s in store for the year ahead. Even though there has been significant progress with decarbonising the industry on many ...

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    Commentary

    Decarbonisation Upskilling – Such a long way to go…

    2023-10-11T12:13:00Z

    Chris Douglas who has spent the past 25 years working across numerous road freight roles in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, this week shares his observations from a recent Zoom training session… ‘Welcome to the road transport industry. We’re a band of brothers, us HGV drivers, I mean, not ...

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    Commentary

    Redrawing the truck brand differentiation battleground

    2023-09-29T10:07:00Z

    For this week’s commentary, Darren Newman has been musing on how brands will differentiate themselves in a carbon zero world where energy tariffs are more important than miles per gallon… In an industry with high costs and low margins, maintaining competitiveness has always been a tight focus for transport operators, ...

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    Commentary

    Truck Fleet Decarbonisation – What a journey…

    2023-09-22T14:02:00Z

    This week Chris Douglas from Polaris Consultancy, who has spent the past 25 years working in road freight across operations, policy creation and consultancy roles in the UK, Europe, Africa and Asia, shares his views on the journey facing us all to a carbon zero future. I can’t help but ...

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    Commentary

    Battery swaps – the great leap forward?

    2023-09-12T13:44:00Z By FUSO Truck and Bus Corporation

    If you’ve been following the debate around how to decarbonise our heaviest vehicles, you’ll be aware that it’s essentially been a three-horse race. Out in front are battery trucks, with megawatt chargers soon to give them a boost. Close behind are hydrogen fuel cell trucks, accompanied by all the heated ...

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    Commentary

    We’re all energy companies now...

    2023-09-07T13:35:00Z By Renault Trucks

    Fixed, tracker or variable? No, we’re not talking mortgages, this week we’re on energy tariffs. We’ve been editing the latest edition of our Summer podcast series this week (OK, we’re being a bit liberal with the use of summer…) and it’s triggered some thinking around the topic and how fleet ...

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    Commentary

    Survival of the fittest

    2023-08-24T07:24:00Z

    Tevva’s decision to merge its operations with little-known US company ElectraMeccanica has underlined the challenges the new start-up manufacturers face as they seek to gain a foothold in the ultra-competitive global truck market. 

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    Commentary

    Mind the gap - make sure nobody gets left behind

    2023-08-16T12:52:00Z

    We joined another call last week with some worried fleet buyers, grappling with the demands from their boards, and their customers, for progress on the road to carbon zero. They’d all done their initial homework, had started their investigations and were in the early stages of business modelling and they’d ...

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    Commentary

    If you think car electrification is tough – try decarbonising lorries and coaches

    2023-08-08T16:01:00Z

    For this week’s newsletter commentary, we passed the keyboard over to the RHA’s managing director Richard Smith to give us the association’s views on the decarbonisation debate. The RHA fully supports net-zero targets but there is a clear and present danger that without proper planning and transition the economy, which ...

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    Commentary

    Breakthrough needed for carbon zero acceleration

    2023-08-01T18:54:00Z

    In recent years, we have seen increased discussion in both industry and government circles about what the dominant net-zero solution will be for heavy goods vehicles: battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell electric. Another possibility is it will be a homogenous mix of these technologies, however experience suggests that this ...

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    Commentary

    The world of carbon zero trucks

    2023-07-19T21:52:00Z

    This week we are launching our Carbon Zero Vehicle Index, a database covering all the zero emission vehicles either coming soon or currently available on the market. It’s an impressive listing with nearly 100 different vehicle models in the dataset, although with many vehicles in small series production and some ...

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    Commentary

    Could this be a new approach to EV adoption?

    2023-07-12T09:58:00Z

    This week we have asked Benoit Laflamme, a senior business leader focused on the energy transition of transport, to share a relatively simple solution to removing an EV adoption blocker. The transport sector is facing a massive amount of change in the coming years, we all acknowledge that. In order ...

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    Commentary

    Time for a rethink on weights and dimensions for carbon zero

    2023-07-05T08:25:00Z By SANY

    If you joined us at Road Transport Expo for the Thursday conference sessions, you’ll know we had a great day of discussion and presentations on the topic of decarbonisation. During the course of the day we asked participants to help us to create a word cloud, answering the question: “What ...

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    Commentary

    Hydrogen - coming in from the cold

    2023-06-30T14:06:00Z

    We’ve had plenty of input from the battery electric advocates of late, so for this week’s commentary we have turned to Tim Harper, CEO of Element 2, for his input. I recently attended th FT’s Hydrogen Summit, a global gathering from 47 countries, with more than 700 registered ...

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    Commentary

    Cleaning up the bio-fuel sector

    2023-06-19T07:47:00Z

    The Renewable Transport Fuel Association (RTFA) has popped up on the radar this week, in part because its CEO, Gaynor Hartnell, is joining us on the panel at the Zemo Conference on Thursday this week, but also because it put out a statement in response to a Transport & Energy ...

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    Commentary

    The costs of flexibility

    2023-06-07T09:40:00Z

    In preparation for the Zemo Partnership conference taking place in London next week (15 June, City Hall, London – book your place to attend), we had reason to spend an hour on the phone to Professor David Cebon from the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight last week. He will be ...

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    Commentary

    Why 80% just isn’t good enough

    2023-06-05T08:31:00Z

    “Hydrogen will have a place in the net zero energy mix, just not as a transportation fuel.” If you hang around this sector long enough, you’ll hear someone lob that ever so polite put down in your direction if you bring up the subject of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as ...