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There are many benefits to electric cars — the convenience of charging at home or work, the fun and usefulness of instant torque, the much lower CO2 emissions and air pollution, and various benefits during a hurricane. However, one of the biggest incentives has long been lower operational costs. Electric vehicles just cost less to charge up and maintain (when done right). As battery costs have come down, these operational savings have been leading to bigger and bigger total cost of ownership (TCO) savings, making EVs no-brainers.
Still, it takes some math to figure out if EVs will save you money compared to whatever else you’d buy, how much they’ll save you, and how long it will take you to see those savings. Normal private market buyers often aren’t into creating spreadsheets to figure all of this out, and buy more based on image, identity, personal tastes, and loose assumptions. Fleet buyers, though, they should definitely be relying on TCO spreadsheets.
Ford is now helping out with that. Not only that, a new Ford tool is focused on helping businesses figure out how and where EVs can be integrated into their fleets. “Ford Pro™, the commercial division of Ford Motor Company, has introduced new digital tools — including E-Switch Assist — to help integrate electric vans and trucks into fleets in a way that best meets business objectives and gets the job done,” Ford writes. “Ford Pro E-Switch Assist helps business and government customers determine if they’re ready to add electric vans and trucks to their fleet—like the E-Transit van and F-150 Lightning pickup—and can help identify which areas in the fleet are ideal for switching. This complimentary web-based tool is now available in the U.S., UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Norway, and the Netherlands.”
One has to think this tool will recommend the Ford F-150 Lightning over the Chevy Silverado EV or Tesla Cybertruck every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Though, joking aside, it’s great to see a major automaker creating this kind of tool in order to help accelerate the transition to electric fleets.
Also, I’m not going to lie, I want to give Ford big props for not shoving “AI” into the text of this next section:
“E-Switch Assist uses advanced algorithms developed by the Ford Pro data science team to analyze connected vehicle data to compare the energy consumption of gas-powered vehicles with the estimated energy needs of comparable electric vehicles, recommending which gas-powered vehicles are suitable to switch.
“The tool accounts for distance driven, cargo load, vehicle efficiency, terrain, driver-specific behavior, external climate, and cabin heating load. The tool also estimates the required number of daily charges for both individual vehicles and fleets of all sizes.”
Not abusing the term “AI”—as is the trend these days—must have either required some restraint or the people at Ford are tired of seeing “AI” thrown around for even the simplest calculations and computer programs these days. Maybe the Ford Pro data science team told the marketing team very firmly to not use the term “AI.”
Anyway, determining how much money an electric vehicle can save you over a gas or diesel one is all about these matters above. The more a company knows and can include in a calculation, the better for getting good forecasts of operational costs and savings. Having a simple, clear tool to plug numbers into makes it all the easier. Props to Ford for creating this tool. And beyond costs, it seems this E-Switch Assist tool would help a company understand the practicality of EV operations and help answer any questions or concerns about EV ownership they may have before making a purchase. Smart. Good luck using the tool to sell more EVs, Ford!
“The importance of these tools and technologies goes beyond selling a customer a new vehicle—it changes mindsets about whether electric vehicles will work for their business while potentially saving them time and money,” Nathan McDonald, EV Strategy and Brand Manager at Ford Pro, states.
“To date, the E-Switch Assist tool has evaluated over 38,000 commercial vehicles, revealing that nearly 53% are potential candidates for transitioning to electric power,” Ford notes.
You can learn more here or on FordPro.com.
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