Under the banner of Evolution to Revolution, the 17th IRTENZ conference focussed on the current and future movements around zero-emission vehicles; infrastructure and energy plans and solutions; legislation, compliance and dealing with productivity loss; and operator learnings from the decarbonisation journey so far. Here’s the second of two reports on the conference held in November 2022.

Creating and managing energy

Simon Monteith, engineering manager of Kahu EV, spoke about how smaller local companies also can have an impact. Since 2008, originally operating as Zero Emission Vehicles, Kahu EV built New Zealand’s first BEV waste truck. The company is also on the verge of launching the first New Zealand-designed and assembled medium-duty BEV.

Monteith said the fourth industrial revolution – the convergence of physical, digital and virtual worlds enabled by increased software sophistication, machine learning and interconnectivity – would open up vast opportunities in the future of transport. These included remote control, autonomy and platooning, advanced telemetry, driver and load monitoring, active route planning, eCommerce integration, wireless charging and anticipatory and reactive maintenance.

“In the not-too-distant future, we will see a fundamental change in the nature of our vehicles with the move to electrification. The true revolution will be Industry 4.0, in which these vehicles will operate. Vehicles will need to be fully functional assets in the smart environment of the future,” Monteith said.

Monteith explained that a significant portion of Kahu EV’s R&D has gone to producing a sophisticated EV control system called EV-Net, a peer-to-peer controller network.

“The network consists of multiple connected hardware modules running multiple software applications. Most vehicle types can run 80% of the same software. It’s an enabler for manufacturers to fast-track their own EV strategies. This is connected to the cloud space by our telematics unit. Any information from vehicles can be captured and uploaded to our servers – that’s where the real smart revolution begins.”

In the logistics industry, this meant a high opportunity for integration of vehicles with infrastructure, said Monteith, especially regarding the management of energy.

Ryan McDonald, head of new business, Hiringa Energy, said the next decade would be all about energy. With Hiringa a player in the green-hydrogen space, McDonald commented: “We don’t pretend hydrogen is going to be a silver bullet for everything, but it has its uses. Diesel is a very effective carrier of energy, an incredibly useful fuel. We have a huge challenge to overcome – that’s why we have to use all the tools in the toolbox. We don’t need to hit a nail with a sledgehammer.”

He said New Zealand was the leading player in the hydrogen field. “We have vehicles operating, and more are coming. You can go to Auckland and see five different fuel-cell technologies in one day – that’s unique globally at the moment.”

McDonald updated the delegates on Hiringa’s refuelling network, which it is rolling out in conjunction with Waitomo. He said New Zealand was ahead of the curve, but Europe and Britain were investing billions in their infrastructures.

“We have some very smart engineers on our team, and we do a lot of analytics around where to put the network. We’re really aggressive with our development. We’ve mapped all of New Zealand, and we’re five years ahead of where we need to be.”

He said Hiringa did not expect to be the only player and was trying to move fast to accelerate decarbonisation.

Regarding cost, McDonald said building fleet scale would drive down costs. However, government support was needed now. “The technology is expensive and needs to get to scale. It’s a chicken and egg…

“We have to pull all levers, but the calculations are compelling. Policy is there to steer into the right direction. The government wants to hear from the transport sector – bend their ear about what you want, collectively push them.”

Andrew Renton, senior principal engineer at Transpower, said Transpower was like NZTA for the power grid. “Power is nothing different to transport – it runs constantly. It’s a big operation, and we take it seriously. New Zealand’s power system is the biggest machine in the country.”

He said the company was committed to understanding the country’s future energy needs – the biggest driver of which would be transport, cumulatively accounting for 16.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent total emissions (including light vehicles and aviation, rail and marine).

He said as the uptake of low-emission heavy vehicles increases, operators would have to come up to speed with how the power system worked. He also assured delegates that there would be enough power to serve all the vehicles on the road.

“Don’t stress… There are 27GW of potential energy generation in the pipeline. Transport will be the same as when electric consumer goods came in [about the mid-20th century]; it’s the power of exponentials. We responded with all the power production we have today. Relative to the New Zealand economy, we built more capacity in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s than we need over the next 30 years.”

Renton added that the next phase of capacity building would be tiny as a proportion of GDP compared with previous big build phases. “We have a bigger economy and more resources – we just need to get on with it.”

Ross Linton, director of Etrucks, spoke about battery-swap technology. “Etrucks has been importing XCMG products since 2018. We have 15 light trucks operating in New Zealand, an energy-neutral truck in a Dunedin quarry, and we have started rolling out the heavier E700 highway trucks. We made a few changes to these to get them right for New Zealand,” he said.

“Battery-swap technology is a point of difference for us. We’re aiming for a robotic battery-swap station that will perform the process in four minutes. There’s currently no other system that’ll get a fully charged battery in four minutes. It’s an infrastructure buffer. It doesn’t matter when you charge a battery that’s not on a truck. Battery swap is a good solution for metro operators. And battery swap as a service changes the capex model significantly.” Linton commented that XCMG also offered hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and was also looking at hydrogen combustion as an interim technology. “There’s no need for any technology to become dominant, each will focus on different applications.”

Legislation and compliance

Richard Lee, of Independent Training Audit Services, an inspection company that uses operators, distributors, suppliers and agents for regulated vehicle inspections, discussed what would need to change in the regulatory space.

“All inspection providers need to meet the requirements and rules for inspections set out by Waka Kotahi. Legislation and rules are behind the game, and that sounds ominous, but it doesn’t need to be,” he said.

Lee said that knowledge and understanding of the coming changes were among the big challenges for regulators. “Powertrains, technology – it’s all going to be heavily OE – and we’re going to have to take what comes from overseas.

“That’s different from the way we’ve done things in the past. Mitigating this requires training, contact and conversations with the regulator, engagements on rules and development, keeping up to date with what’s coming, and being ahead of the game.”

Lee said legislation wasn’t keeping up with technology. “In most cases, it’s reactive, not proactive. That’s why we have exemptions.

“What can be done? Operators, suppliers, distributors and regulators all need to talk, ask questions and push for improvements. We all have knowledge and skills, and we need to share it.”

Glen McGarry, senior manager, repair and environmental, Motor Trade Association, said that as the transition to ‘non-ICE’ vehicles gained momentum, the development of regulations needed to occur in parallel.

He said that with the uptake of Euro- 6, EVs, FCEVs and hydrogen retrofits, the MTA has concentrated on initiatives such as the upskilling of the heavy- transport workspace; youth engagement to encourage young people to join the automotive sector; and development of guidelines and pathways for certification, safety and compliance for new technologies that will be fit for purpose.

“Once the vehicles are in service, how do we make sure the industry is sustainable and environmentally friendly going forward?

“MTA is looking to reduce the overall carbon emissions for the sector rather than just looking at tailpipe emissions. It requires a team effort from all participants in the industry,” he said.

Doug Latto, director, Transport and Mechanical Consulting, discussed the certification impacts for future heavy- vehicle fleets.

“OE manufacturers are going to focus on the needs of the biggest markets, so there will be an ongoing need to convert and adapt vehicles for our market and regulations.

“But conversions create issues that affect compliance, and the people who wrote the land transport rules in the late 1990s and early 2000s never really envisaged modifications like swapping out an engine for electric drive,” he said. Latto commented that New Zealand rules and definitions needed to be updated to allow for emerging technology, citing powered trailer axles as an example.

“Even in the EU – one of the most bureaucratic parts of the world – they’re updating their definitions of a trailer. In New Zealand, we’re not doing anything significant when it comes to rule reviews.

“From my perspective, the promise of the land-transport rule review has not delivered or been updated as required. That makes it harder for heavy-vehicle certifiers to sign off something and makes it harder for the people that review us because they don’t know what to measure us against. And the rules are not being aligned to international regulations. We really have to get on the front foot of that whole process.”

Operator experience

Chris Carr, director of Carr & Haslam, and Alex Thompson, general manager, vehicle logistics, discussed the company’s introduction of an eCanter to its fleet last year.

“We’re the first privately owned company to own an eCanter; the others have been large corporates that put other people’s money into those projects. We spent our own. A diesel Canter is about $80,000; the eCanter ends up at about $280,000. It’s not possible to break into these new technologies without the support of the likes of EECA, as they have done for a lot of the early adopters,” Carr said.

“The cost in these early stages is really high. We’re truckies [Carr & Haslam team], but we know this is the right thing to do. We have a lot of passionate people keen to make this EV work. EVs are not the same.”

From an operational perspective, Thompson said that at first, the company’s drivers didn’t show interest in operating the eCanter. But within six months or so, more were asking for a go.

“The eCanter’s range is quoted at 120km, which is spot on for our application in metro Auckland,” Thompson said. “Our ops guys had to understand it wasn’t the traditional way we normally run a truck. It was imperative to get everyone’s head around it.

“The truck’s two drivers have two different preferences for charging – one tops up every time he offloads and reloads and the other charges during his half-hour break. Both approaches work.

“Ideally, we want EV trucks that have bigger range and heavier capacity. We’re looking forward to the next step. But the best thing other operators can do now is start reaching out to their suppliers.”

Fabian Lloyd, decarbonisation manager for national transport at Fonterra, explained that light vehicles, medium and heavy trucks, and farm vehicles and others such as forklifts made up the three focus areas for fleet decarbonisation at the co-op. “We have a 2030 target of 30% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions, and long-term to have net- zero emissions by 2050.”

He said Fonterra’s milk-tanker fleet of 504 truck-and-trailer units travelled 95,000,000km a year, and at the peak, a tanker would collect from a farm every nine seconds and deliver to a manufacturing plant every 24 seconds.

“Emissions from the 47 million litres of diesel we burn a year equates to 126,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum,” he added.

Lloyd said Fonterra had three focus areas to reduce emissions. The first was reducing fuel burn by driving the truck as well as possible and investing in driver training and telematics. “We’ve seen a 3.5% fuel reduction since 2018 and aim for 2% year on year going forward. It’s audacious, but we’re confident.”

The second was reducing vehicle kilometres travelled per litre of milk collected. “This includes increasing operational efficiency and making use of low-carbon modes where possible and best use of our route planning systems.”

Finally, by displacing diesel, “either using a low- or zero-carbon fuel or switching to an EV or hydrogen. We’re technology agnostic and are aware we need to move swiftly in the medium term.”

He said the co-op’s first electric truck, ‘Milk-E’ had performed well but had had hold-ups from the communication with the milk collection system.

“The idea is to get as many of these types of vehicles and technologies as we can when we can get hold of them.”

Gareth Wishart, group general manager innovation (H2 Hybrid), HWR Group, updated the delegates on HWR’s hydrogen project. “We feel we have a unique situation in our group to do something with hydrogen,” he began. “The concept is to develop hydrogen fuelling infrastructure – you can’t just buy hydrogen in New Zealand at the moment – and take it upon ourselves to generate the consumption. We’ve committed $15 million to exploring New Zealand-owned and produced hydrogen and trialling diesel/hydrogen dual-fuel technology.”

Wishart said the first station, in Gore, would be active in April 2023, with 10 dual-fuel trucks based there. “The site can create 400kg of hydrogen a day, which appears to be enough to run 27 dual-fuel trucks. Our systems can communicate with the station to prepare hydrogen for a truck at the most cost- effective time of day, and refuelling will become a scheduled task.”

Wishart said the hydrogen would be accessible to other companies wanting to access hydrogen to reach their own sustainability goals.

The dual-fuel truck simply retrofits hydrogen injection to the intake, leaving the diesel and DEF system to operate as normal. The trucks run 40% hydrogen, 60% diesel.

“One dual-fuel truck averaging 348km a day can eliminate 200kg of carbon emissions a day. Complete fleet transition would eliminate millions of kilogrammes of emissions. It’s a means to an end, a transitionary piece to ramp up to zero- emissions practically and relatively cheaply with trucks we already have.”