Is Your Company Ready for an EV Fleet Future?

The global energy system is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Driven by the growing need for a decarbonized energy supply to mitigate global warming, and the demands of an increasingly digitized and electrified world, the grid of tomorrow will be cleaner, smarter and more decentralized and responsive than ever before.

A key beneficiary of this transformation are organizations. Already, companies (particularly those in critical industries such as data centers, healthcare, defense, finance and energy), universities and municipalities are seeing the benefits of the evolving grid. More and more, organizations are considering the implementation of flexible resources such as renewable energy, onsite energy storage and microgrids to ensure resilience and reliability in their energy supply.

Over the past five years, organizations have driven wide-scale adoption of renewable energy, thanks to the rapid decrease in the price of both wind and solar and the increase in organizational sustainability commitments. To date, over 130 global companies and more than 60 U.S. cities have committed to source 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. Increasing advances in technology and the development of the Meshgrid™ ecosystem—where organizations will both generate and consume energy as prosumers—will further enable businesses and institutions to green their energy supply and manage that energy at increasingly active levels.

For many organizations, the next frontier in energy and carbon management is the electric vehicle (EV).  Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects that passenger-vehicle, battery-electric cars will achieve cost-parity—on an unsubsidized basis—with efficient combustion engine vehicles by 2024. By 2040, EVs will account for 55% of all new cars sold globally. Stanford economist and think-tank leader, Tony Seba, is even more bullish, predicting that 60% of U.S. vehicles will be EVs by 2030. These projections have rattled car manufacturers; the majority now have EV models in production—many of which will eventually be autonomous, self-driving vehicles.

McKinsey predicts that use of EV technology in light- and medium-duty trucks will also experience rapid sales acceleration of up to 27% market penetration by 2030. Tesla’s Semi will offer a heavy-duty electric option that projects $200,000 in fuel savings per vehicle, with only a 2-year payback period. While still in early production, the trucks have already seen high reservation rates from the likes of Walmart, PepsiCo, FedEx and UPS.

The implications of these projections have considerable and far-reaching repercussions. As the market inevitably moves to adopt EV technologies once economies of scale are achieved, organizations will be forced to respond. Corporate fleets that currently employ internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles will be progressively required to adopt to this change by transitioning an EV fleet and updating their infrastructure to support EV charging.

Learn more about the rise of electric vehicles and the EV fleet in our new white paper: The Disruptive Power of Fleet Electrification.