Electric Fleets Are Growing. But Are We Really Ready to Leave Diesel Behind?

Every time I talk to someone who has actually driven an electric commercial vehicle, I hear a very similar story.

It’s quiet. There’s no transmission shifting through gears. There’s almost no vibration. Steering is easy, acceleration is smooth, and after spending a full day behind the wheel, the difference can be significant.

I recently spoke with Daniel Hilson, CEO and founder of BetterFleet, a company that helps fleets plan and manage electric vehicle operations. Our conversation made me think about EVs from a slightly different perspective.

We spend a lot of time debating whether electric vehicles are better than diesel or whether batteries can replace internal combustion engines. But maybe that’s not the most interesting question anymore.

Electric fleets already exist. Some of them are operating at a scale that would have sounded unrealistic not that long ago. BetterFleet says its platform is now used by more than 200 fleets globally, and one of its deployments with Go-Ahead in the UK has involved more than 1,000 electric buses and chargers across multiple depots. Betterfleet

So the more interesting question may be: What does it actually take to make an electric fleet work every day?

Drivers Notice the Difference

I've talked to drivers who have operated electric trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles, and their feedback tends to be surprisingly consistent.

The first thing they notice isn't emissions.

It's the driving experience.

Less noise. Less vibration. No traditional transmission constantly shifting gears. Smooth acceleration. Easy steering.

Daniel made the same point during our conversation.

And I understand it personally, even though my experience is on a much smaller scale. I drive plug-in hybrids, and whenever they're operating completely in electric mode, I love it. Around town, it's quiet, smooth and effortless.

The difference becomes even more interesting when we're talking about commercial vehicles.

If you compare a modern BMW 7 Series with an electric BMW i7, both are already extremely quiet, comfortable and refined vehicles. The difference exists, but you're starting from a very high level in either one.

Now compare an older diesel garbage truck, delivery truck or bus with a modern electric version.

That's a very different comparison.

For someone spending eight, ten or twelve hours a day in that vehicle, noise, vibration and drivetrain behavior aren't small details. They're part of the working environment.

Fleet Owners Look at EVs Differently

Drivers experience the vehicle.

Fleet owners have to make the numbers work.

And this is where my conversation with Daniel became particularly interesting.

A fleet isn't simply buying an electric truck instead of a diesel truck. Once you start operating dozens or hundreds of EVs, you're managing an entirely different energy system.

Imagine 100 vehicles returning to a yard in the evening.

They don't necessarily all need to start charging at full power at the same time. One vehicle may leave again at 4 a.m. Another might not leave until 9 a.m. One may need almost a full battery for tomorrow's route while another only needs enough energy to cover 50 miles.

Then electricity pricing enters the equation.

BetterFleet's software is designed to combine information about vehicles, routes, chargers and energy requirements so fleets can decide what needs to charge, when it needs to charge and how much energy each vehicle actually needs. Its digital-twin technology can incorporate factors including route topography, vehicle physics, driver behavior and grid constraints. Betterfleet

That's where AI could make fleet electrification much more interesting.

Instead of a fleet manager manually trying to keep track of hundreds of batteries and chargers, software can increasingly predict what tomorrow's operation requires and manage charging around it.

But Let's Not Pretend the Problems Are Solved

I'm interested in EV technology, but I don't think we should ignore its limitations.

Battery capacity still matters.

Range still matters.

Cold weather matters.

Payload matters.

Charging time matters.

And infrastructure may be one of the biggest questions of all.

The International Energy Agency notes that battery-electric trucks still have range limitations for many long-haul applications and that expanding public heavy-duty charging will be important if electric trucks are going to move beyond shorter routes and depot-based operations. IEA

That distinction is important.

A city bus running predictable routes and returning to the same depot every night is very different from a Class 8 truck running 600 or 700 miles across multiple states.

A garbage truck is different from an OTR truck.

A local delivery van is different from a reefer running across the country.

We sometimes talk about "electric trucks" as though all commercial vehicles perform the same job. They don't.

That's why I don't think the transition will happen evenly.

Predictability May Be the Bigger Story

One of my biggest takeaways from talking with Daniel wasn't actually about batteries.

It was about predictability.

Diesel has one enormous advantage: the infrastructure already exists. A truck can pull into a truck stop, fill up relatively quickly and continue down the highway.

But diesel also has a weakness that fleets have dealt with forever.

Nobody knows exactly what it's going to cost six months from now.

Fuel is one of the largest expenses for many transportation companies, and sudden price movements can completely change the economics of a lane or contract.

Electricity doesn't eliminate energy costs, and it certainly doesn't make operating a fleet free. But for the right operation, having greater control over when vehicles consume energy creates opportunities that don't really exist when you're buying diesel at the pump.

Maintenance is another part of the equation. An electric drivetrain eliminates many of the mechanical components associated with a traditional internal-combustion powertrain. For a fleet trying to forecast operating expenses years into the future, that predictability can be valuable.

So maybe the argument for commercial EVs isn't simply:

Electricity is cheaper than diesel.

It may increasingly be:

Can electricity make certain fleet operating costs more predictable?

That's a much more interesting business discussion.

Other Countries Are Showing That It Can Work

It's also easy to look at the American market and assume that commercial electrification is still mostly experimental.

Globally, that's becoming harder to argue.

Electric buses are already operating at substantial scale in parts of Europe, and BetterFleet's Go-Ahead deployment demonstrates that more than 1,000 electric vehicles and chargers can be managed across a multi-depot operation. Here in the U.S., Missoula's Mountain Line has built a bus fleet that is nearly 90% electric. Betterfleet

That doesn't prove that every American trucking operation should switch to batteries.

It proves something different:

Large electric fleets can work when the application, infrastructure and operation make sense.

And companies like BetterFleet are addressing another part of the equation that doesn't receive nearly as much attention as the vehicles themselves: how do you actually manage all of this?

The truck or bus gets the attention because we can see it.

But behind that vehicle increasingly sits charging infrastructure, software, telematics, energy management, route planning, battery monitoring and AI.

The vehicle may be electric, but the bigger transformation could be happening in the operation behind it.

So, Will America Go Electric?

I don't think we're anywhere near the point where diesel suddenly disappears.

There are applications where battery-electric vehicles make a lot of sense today, and others where the limitations are still difficult to overcome.

Long-haul trucking is probably one of the hardest.

But technology doesn't have to solve every transportation application simultaneously to become important.

Electric vehicles can continue expanding through buses, municipal fleets, delivery vehicles, regional transportation and predictable return-to-base operations while batteries, charging infrastructure and software continue improving.

And that's what I took away from my conversation with Daniel.

The conversation around commercial EVs is changing.

A few years ago, much of the discussion was about whether electric commercial vehicles could work at all.

Now we're increasingly talking about how to operate them better.

Companies are developing AI systems to decide when vehicles should charge. Software can predict energy requirements based on routes, weather, terrain and vehicle conditions. Fleets in other parts of the world are already operating hundreds or even thousands of electric vehicles. BetterFleet itself says more than 200 fleets use its platform today. Betterfleet

There are still serious limitations, particularly around battery capacity, charging time and heavy-duty charging infrastructure.

But the technology isn't standing still either.

So I'm less interested in asking whether electric vehicles will "kill diesel."

I think the better question is:

How much of commercial transportation can realistically become electric, and how long will it take us to get there?

That answer is still being written.

But after talking with the people operating these vehicles, the drivers using them and companies like BetterFleet trying to solve the problems behind the scenes, I think we're going to find out sooner than many people expect.

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