British Transport Advisory Consortium Conference 2017

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British Transport Advisory Consortium Conference
2017
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Handsfree Group attend the 2017 British Transport
Advisory Consortium Conference The
Conference There was an impressive turn out to
what was a very informative conference, focussing
on industry news, cost saving and best
practise. From alternative fuels and electric
driving to the DVSA introducing an earned
recognition scheme, the conference was packed
full of a wide variety of useful insights for all
attendees to take away. Handsfree Group UK Sales
Director, Chris Baines, attended the conference
and these were his 4 biggest takeaway points from
the day.
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Takeaway Point 1 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)
fuel is revolutionary, not only saving cost on
fuel but protecting the environment at the same
time. Waitrose are leading the way with
Bio-Metheyne (Bio CNG) Alternative Fuel powered
vehicles by making the switch already. A great
deal was discussed about CNG (methane stored at
high pressure) a fuel which can be used in
place of gasoline (petrol), Diesel fuel and
propane/LPG. CNG combustion produces fewer
undesirable gases than the traditional vehicle
fuels.
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CNG Fuels are the company supplying the gas pumps
to Waitrose, their vision is as follows

• To develop a Bio-CNG refueling network with the
  capability to service all of the UKs major
  trucking routes.
• To build a network that is so reliable and
  dispenses CNG at such a low cost, that Bio-CNG is
  the only sensible choice for fleet operators.
• To see HGV fleets in the UK catch up with
  international peers by running predominantly on
  low-emissions, low-cost biome thane.

An average HGV does 200K KM per year and averages
an MPG of 9-10 miles per gallon. At current
prices (1.19 per litre) it can cost 68800 per
annum in diesel per vehicle. Switching to CNG
alternatives can see savings of up to 43.When
you consider that the average logistics operator
is running at around 3 4 margin, with the
biggest costs being fuel, switching makes sense
and could boost operator margin to 8.
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Take Away Point 2 A conference exclusive Tesla
to launch electric HGV.  This was a very exciting
part of the conference, as we could see electric
HGV take to the road very soon.   Teslas truck
could have a range of 200-300 miles which is
impressive for what the company are calling the
small-range model. They are looking to expand
into long-distance models capable of 1000 miles
on a single charge. The news has now broken
mainstream with reports of Teslas Elon Musk
describing the commercial vehicle as a beast
and confirming the companys all-electric truck
reveal date of 26th October 2017.
Take Away Point 3 We have all heard a few
murmurings in the press about future Diesel
engine production stopping and now it is becoming
a reality  Volvo are to stop producing Diesel
engines for its car division from 2019, switching
to fully electric or hybrid only.  They will be
launching five fully electric cars between 2019
and 2021 three Volvos and two from Polestar,
their high performance division.  
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Take Away Point 4 The DVSA are introducing a
revolutionary earned recognition scheme that
makes vehicle safety related information
accessible. Once a vehicle is audited and
compliant, a VOSA Highway Patrol car will be able
to remotely check its maintenance records to
ensure everything is in order. Applications are
officially now open for the new scheme and it
could become mandatory for fleets, in a similar
way to how ELD (Electronic Logging Device) has
done in the U.S.
Tomorrows World Vehicles have developed a lot in
the past 40 years, however the feeling from the
conference is that the next 40 could be just as
big, if not bigger. Successful car manufacturers
of the future will be software driven, so players
like Google and Apple are likely to be those
manufacturers, not the typical OE manufacturers
of today.In contrast, with computer giant Apple
making 70000 profit every 60 seconds it could
buy Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen, while still
having enough change to buy McDonalds.