Endeavor Plugged-In’s Post

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Endeavor Plugged In, the industry guide to what's happening with electrification. Today, we're discussing how EV's are changing manufacturing from the production of passenger cars to trucks and heavy equipment and the components that go into them. Manufacturers are adjusting their business models and rethinking their processes and their plant footprints to accommodate EV's. We'll look at the ways they're innovating on the production floor and the challenges that lie ahead. I'm pleased to introduce today's lineup of Endeavor Business Media EVX. Parts. Today we have John Hitch. He's the editor of Fleet Maintenance, Sarah Jensen, Executive Editor for Power and Motion, and Dennis Sneak, a tech editor for Industry Week. We'll start with you, Sarah. Um, can you talk a little bit about how, um manufacturers are adjusting their business models and their, you know, plants to? Uh, manufacture components for EV's, Our focus of power motion is a lot on the hydraulics, pneumatics technologies that are used in everything from light vehicles to heavy duty trucks to, you know, off Hwy. heavy equipment. And pretty much everybody in the space at this point is if they're not already developing something they're looking at. Ways they can get into the electrification space and figuring out how where hydraulics, animatics fit into that space as well. You have there's a lot of companies like Dan Foss is a big known company. They have their Etron division, which is focused specifically on electric drive technologies and Bosch, Rexroth and Parker Hannifin or other. Big companies in the industry that are also have are also developing a lot on the electrification side and they're, you know, all of these companies know that's a direction that's coming. And for the various markets they serve and they have, they can bring their hydraulics and pneumatics experience as well to the technologies that need to be developed because there is going to be an interplay of so many of those sort of traditional technologies as well as the electric. There's a lot of investigation of how to. Mary, the technologies together or when does it make sense to potentially replace those traditional technologies and how are suppliers reacting to the chain? I probably call it bumpy because there are some that are really embracing it and really understand that this is a shift that's taking place and there is going to be a space for both types of technologies and bringing them together. But there are others who are just now that's not going to, that's not happening. That's not gonna work, Dennis. I wanted to. Find out from you, you know you you cover tech for industry Week and what are some highlights for you just around innovation in EV? Production and manufacturing. A lot of what you're seeing, innovation, changes in manufacturing are connected, but secondary. They don't exactly properly have to do with the shop floor. Umm, you know, I just didn't interview with Aaron Devola. She's the head of sustainability at Siemens Digital Industries. And I was asking her what industries are kind of, you know, doing best in terms of sustainability and circular design. And EV manufacturing was one of the two or three that she cited. And we talk about Greenfield plants versus brownfield plants and the advantage that Greenfield plants have when it comes to sustainability. Industry 4.0 EV manufacturing is a Greenfield sector. It's all relatively new. So in terms of embracing new technologies or techniques to be more sustainable, EV manufacturing is a huge like. So, you know, there are related topics like a cyber security, you're seeing advances in cyber security kind of driven from EV manufacturing because these are highly connected vehicles that are constantly on the move. Uh, digital design tools like new product lifecycle management, PLM tools, new simulation technology to allow rapid design iterations without having to waste materials on unnecessary prototypes, better designed for manufacturing processes, materials design, balancing strength and weight, optimizing recyclability. And there are workforce concerns. You know, you have more technology literacy requirements for operators on an EV line that changes trading programs. It encourages cooperation with. Educational institutions and it increases the value of knowledge capture and retention so none of this really directly has to do with full operations but all highly connected concerns that anyone leading an EV company needs to be thinking about now in terms of pure production was taking place on the floor plant design and EV manufacturing has to be flexible to account for rapidly changing technologies John I wanted to ask you you know you're you're in the truck area with fleet maintenance and. Maybe you can start off by just, you know, a lot of. Our readership is interested in Tesla and what's going on with the Tesla Semi truck. Tesla has been around, you know, for a long time now and they figured out a lot of things what makes a good EV for, you know, a passenger vehicle? And I think at first they thought it would be a little easier to scale that up to a Class 8 truck. You know with, uh 82,000 LB gross vehicle weight rating, it is not and so that was announced what 2017 or something like that and now for the last year or so, PepsiCo and other fleets have been using the Tesla semi and by all accounts, it's, you know, really successful to the point that you know. Everyone, every major plead is, you know, they have orders and now they're trying to get them a Pepsi. I want to say in California has over 50 now. But but the big thing is it's almost like a 500 mile range now when you think about doing your charging a little smarter, you know when you go maybe down to like 30% or 40% capacity and then you can charge faster. You can get in a 24 hour period over 1000 miles. They proved that last fall. So that's really exciting stuff and and ACT Expo this last May Dan Priestley, one of their BP's he had announced that their capacity in. I wanna say 2026 or or thereabouts, they're hoping at some point after that to scale to like 50,000 units a year. So you really have to, you know, think about what class of vehicles so light, medium or heavy as far as production and scale, who's doing well? Well, light duty obviously the, the smaller is the easier. So if you take, uh, General Motors with their bright trap Zebo, that's a cargo van. I just got a chance to test drive that last month or we're in July now. So I guess it it was in May, but so I think GM is. You know, trying to just keep costs down so they can, you know, sell for less because that's really what this is. Who cares what your capacity is if no one's going to buy it? We saw that with Ford with a F-150 Lightning at the beginning of the year. They scaled back on that, but they're each transit their cargo van that's doing really well. So you never can tell like what. What the fleets and what the consumers are going to need. No one's gonna buy something if it's not reliable. That has been proven. And light duty, medium duty is getting there as well. Heavy duty. Uh, it's tough people like, uh, Daimler and Volvo, they've been doing tests since like 2020. And so I think just because of their pedigree, you can trust those, but they're, they're going pretty, pretty slow. You'd think that they'd have like thousands and thousands of these right now, but let me just bring up one stat. So Cal start in their last ZT deployment stats. This is from 2023. Think like middle of the year 2023. But for heavy duty trucks, there was only 867 deployments. At all. And so that's if you take over 5 million in the total stock, that's a point. Zero 2% share. Uh, you look at cargo vans though, there's a / 14,000 and so that's a .39% share a medium duty. You know, the step fans, it's a .32% and then for medium duty trucks is a .01%. So we're like just scratching the surface with the heavy duty. Is that lately because it's low demand or are they just, there's just not the production capabilities yet to manufacture? Well. Sure. So I think the production would match the demand at some point, you know, they would just put more ships, more people build that up quickly. But the demand isn't there. There's been a pendulum shift, you know, for the last five years. You're hearing everything out great. These zero emission trucks are going to be and we have the government regulations. So you're going to have to get it. And now, you know, from the American Trucking Associations and Alida. Which is the owner operator, lobby group, all of their heads and a lot of top fleets, very respected people that have tried 0 emission trucks and really are trying to adopt them. They're all saying, whoa, we need to hit the brakes on this. There are people that really see a lot of potential. And battery electric trucks. Lower maintenance and and that that is bearing out that there's going to be lower maintenance because of regenerative braking. You don't have to change brakes as much. So yeah, we're about to wrap up here. So if if you guys wanna just maybe sum up like. One or two things in your industry. Before we close, that would be great. Sarah, is there anything you want to close with that we should be thinking about? Umm, sure, I think you know from the component. Folks side it's really just kind of needing to kind of look at the application and understanding the technologies and trying to find the information to get a good understanding of things. And you know, there's a lot of partnerships out there of like battery manufacturer or and fluid power company or you know, that are working together to help bring the technologies and just finding those people to work with and you know, just keeping an eye on what's going on in the market. I guess is the best I can. Yes, alright. Thanks, Dennis. What about you? I think from the leadership perspective, um Evie, manufacturers need to keep flexibility in mind and sustainability in mind and know that, you know, the manufacturing world is looking for them to lead in these two categories. You know, take advantage of the fact that it's a Greenfield sector of manufacturing and then for those of us on the outside to be paying attention for all of those little innovations, think they'll be kind of drip, drip, dripping over time. Great. Thank you. And John. Yeah, I would say if you are on the fleet side and you're interested in, you know, adopting these, uh. Take a look at everything. Don't just look at one side and say, ohh, this person had had a bad experience. So I'm just gonna wait till the government actually puts a gun to my head and forces me to do it. Because you don't want to be left behind when everyone else is trying this stuff out. But also you want to not, you know, dive in head first. Just make calculated risks and also bring your whole team on because there's got to be a lot of change management that happens when you're bringing EV and you got to get the Chargers. Uh, if you have technicians that are going to work on these, they have to, you know, be trained up on all of this. So just learn as much as you can now because we are still in the early stages and it's not going to be like tomorrow. You're going to have to. By like 100 electric trucks, we have time. But don't get complacent.