Weighing the cost of
the EV revolution

According to some estimates, over a million all-electric or hybrid vehicles are expected to be sold across Europe next year. Put another way, that is four times the level of sales last year. Predictably, environmental campaigners are jubilant. Consumer champions also welcome electric vehicles’ simpler powertrains and, especially in the case of all-electric models, the potential for lower maintenance costs.

But spare a thought for Europe’s finished vehicle supply chains, which must cope with what may be a dramatic shift in the model mix that is moving through them. As the proportion of electric vehicles (EVs) increases, so do the challenges faced by logistics service providers. Simply put, supply chains honed to peak efficiency on the assumption that they will be handling conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles will instead have to adjust to vehicles with very different characteristics.

Risky business

For one thing, both hybrid and all-electric models utilise significantly higher voltages than combustion vehicles, with voltages reaching 650 volts, clearly giving rise to a risk of fatal exposure. Batteries may give off fumes and the energy stored within them can give rise to explosions. Additionally, regulators warn that vehicles may move unexpectedly because of magnetic forces within their motors.

That said, regulators seemingly regard most logistics activities as relatively low risk. It is the manufacturers’ strictures regarding vehicle movements that may be more problematic.

Manufacturers’ strictures regarding vehicle movements may be more problematic. According to one logistics provider with knowledge of the company, Tesla prefers that operatives do not move its vehicles once they are in compound storage, so as to conserve battery power, and that Tesla uses vehicles’ on-board telematics for notification of any such movement. When asked to verify this information, Telsa declined to comment on or to confirm whether these are its processes. And yet, for operational reasons, compound operators can at times find the freedom to move vehicles useful. At low levels of EVs within the overall mix, it is a problem with which compound operators can probably live, but when volumes increase difficulties might arise.

“The average battery charge at the factory gate is 30-50%, but the average required charge at the point of handover to the customer is 80%, which raises an obvious question: who does that additional charging, and where? If a logistics service provider has to be capable of charging 30-40 vehicles at a time, then the charging infrastructure has to be in place.”

Polish logistics service provider Adampol is already weighing the cost of this, as well as thinking through the operational complexities of large-scale EV charging, says Krzysztof Szeligowski, the company’s deputy sales director.

“With certain electric vehicles, the vehicle cannot be moved until the battery is re‑charged, and the re‑charging process can be time consuming, usually requiring a power supply which may not always be available at every stage of the finished vehicle supply chain, for example, at the roadside when on a transporter.”

“Traditionally, logistics service providers have tended to bulk out before transporter loads have hit weight limits,” says Mike Sturgeon, executive director of the Association of European Vehicle Logistics (ECG). “But now, with all-electric vehicle batteries, as well as bigger, longer and wider hybrids, also with batteries, they’re starting to hit the limit. More and more, I’m hearing of carriers having to leave one vehicle off the load in order to stay under the weight limit.”

Sometimes it is more than one vehicle, especially if the vehicle mix contains a high proportion of EVs, says Adampol’s Szeligowski.

“Due to weight, we can lose two to three cars on a full transporter load of EVs, which obviously results in a higher unit cost of transportation,” he says.

National differences also impact the extent to which Europe’s logistics service providers may be commercially affected by the weight issue, notes the ECG’s Sturgeon. While the 40-tonne weight limit applies across Europe, individual national rulings on permissible transporter size, principally height, also govern how many vehicles may be carried on a transporter. In general, a 4-metre height limit applies across Europe, says Sturgeon, but several countries permit higher load, in Spain and Portugal, for instance, the limit is 4.5 metres. However, in France and the UK there is no set limit, with operators merely being obliged to maintain suitable bridge clearance.

“In terms of profitability and load factor, there’s quite a difference: if a carrier is only able to carry eight cars to begin with, then a reduction to seven vehicles is quite a hit.”

Trailer innovations

Attention is turning to transporter manufacturers as a means of squaring this awkward circle. Over the past few years, as automotive manufacturers’ vehicle range and model mix has tended to become heavier, longer, and wider, Europe’s transporter manufacturers have helped carriers to cope by producing transporters engineered to be lighter, stronger and better able to accommodate higher and wider vehicles such as large SUVs.

Italian car transporter manufacturer Rolfo, for instance, has made a significant investment in the use of CAD and other software design tools, so as to produce structures and transporter frames that are optimised for strength, weight and aerodynamic efficiency, achieving an overall transporter weight reduction of the order of 20-30%.

At Rimo Auto Transport, another manufacturer, the use of a special high-specification steel to increase structural strength, while reducing overall weight, has delivered a reduction in transporter weight by two tons.

So, can transporter manufacturers deliver still further weight reductions? The manufacturers are not optimistic, reckoning that the easy reductions have already been made: further reductions are possible, but generally only at the margin.

Axle is the answer

Consequently, attention is turning to additional axles as the way forward, with ‘push’ axles, which can be raised and lowered according to the need and the load, seen as the way forward.

At Rimo Auto Transport, for instance, European sales manager Tomas Jorudas notes that with a third axle, a transporter’s weight limit rises to as high as 44 tonnes in several European countries, including Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. In only a few other countries, he adds, does the weight limit remain the same.

“With internal combustion-powered vehicles, third axles were only rarely called for: now, there’s a real use-case. So although we don’t yet have any models on the market, we are actively designing them, because we can see that it’s impossible to avoid them.”

How will the marketplace respond? Will transport rates rise? Will two-tier pricing emerge, where EVs and conventionally-powered vehicles attract different ‘rate cards’? No one yet knows, or is willing to speculate. And nor does everyone actually accept that such outcomes are inevitable. ECM’s Stuart, for instance, notes that battery innovation and technology is moving at a very fast pace. So it is perfectly possible, he points out, that the weight penalty presently associated with EVs will diminish over time.