Listen To This Before You Electrify Your Fleet

Episode Highlights

 

(0:00) – Introduction

(0:38) – Beginning of the episode

(2:40) – What is NextEra’s “secret sauce”?

(4:39) – “Kicking the tires” on NextEra Energy’s customer experience

(7:01) – Domino’s new electrified pizza delivery fleet switch to EV

(8:37) – 2023 plans for NextEra Energy

(10:58) – Episode wrap-up

Links

Connect with Nate Shadoin on LinkedIn

Learn more about NextEra Energy

Transcript

Elena: Hey Nate, how you doing? Thank you so much for being here today.

Nate: I’m doing well, Elena, thanks for asking.

Elena: I am so so glad that you’ve taken the time, I know that you are out and about and traveling. So appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk about EVs. So just to dive into here, Nate is in the business development organization or the mobility division I should say at NextEra Energy and I know you have a ton of experience with electrifying fleets and fleet management in general. So if you could just bring the audience up to speed and talk about NextEra Energy’s mission and some of the problems that you’re solving for fleet owners.

Nate: Sure, that’s a great question. So NextEra Energy is based out of Florida and we like to say we’re the biggest company that no one’s ever heard of. We are a Fortune 200 publicly traded company. We’re probably most well known for owning a public utility in the state of Florida that serves about 6 million customers and the business units that exists outside of our utility are mainly renewable energy generation. So our mission is to help customers decarbonize operations, generate on site renewable energy, things of that nature, like solar and wind and efficient mobility. And this division is focused on fleets so large commercial industrial fleets, who are looking to decarbonize, they’re operating through electrification, so adding electric vehicles into their fleets as other vehicles get phased out. And so our mission again is to help companies decarbonize through electric vehicles, fleet electrification infrastructure at their depots, and we also have a couple other offers you can get into later. And then additionally, a joint venture as well.

Elena: Anybody that is listening, who is a fleet manager, you absolutely need to go and chat with Nate. So speaking of fleet managers, what do you want fleet managers to know most about NextEra? Anything that’s differentiating about how you’re going about, again, as you say, decarbonizing fleet, what’s the special sauce?

Nate: Great question. There’s definitely other companies out there that helpe with infrastrucutre but a couple of things that set us apart and make us unique. Number one, we’re very well capitalized. We deployed about $10 billion in capital every year for renewable energy products. So we’re not a startup. We’re not somebody that has a cash burn situation where if you don’t raise more capital, you’re going to be out of business in 18 months. So that’s one place of strength for us. Number two, we acquired a company two years ago that kind of got the mobility division kicked off, EIQ mobility. And basically they are a fleet evaluation service, so if a fleet manager that says, hey, like, I’ve got 300 vehicles, I don’t really know where to start, when it comes to electrification, I don’t know my options are, I kind of need a roadmap. We are able to take fleet data, telematics data, domicile data where the vehicles are located, what type of duty cycle they’re doing, how many miles they drive per day to take a variety of different data points, and we crunch the numbers of vehicles that can be electrified, and show an operational cost savings we give you metrics around TCO reduction. So energy modeling, in addition to providing just the game plan for electrification. So we kind of start there and then once you move into the direction of infrastructure, we have three or four different options.

Elena: That’s so interesting and I love how you talk about the game plan for electrifying because I imagine this is a huge undertaking for a fleet manager. You have all kinds of assets tied up in all sorts of different ways. And let’s talk a little bit more about the customer experience and CX and how you’re really almost simplifying as you’re talking about the many ways that you’re helping fleet managers it reminds me of like this really concierge type of service where you can help those fleet managers get onto that road to decarbonization. Talk a little bit more about customer experience and how maybe even what some of your customers have said what was their situation before working with NextEra? And then after working with NextEra, what was kind of the transformation that happened?

Nate: Sure, yeah. And we really pride ourselves on the customer experience and make sure that it’s right. What we don’t want to do is have somebody trying to figure out on the fly and have to go back and fix things after the fact. So we take it very seriously when we do help with renewable energy or electric vehicle charging that it is done right. And done in a very professional and conscientious manner because we have a regulated utility with electric vehicles in their fleet. So the interconnectivity to the grid, that is something that we have a lot of experience with already. And so when you think about a turnkey solution of just having one partner that you can rely on taking it from a game plan, with electrification to design and engineering cost estimation to actual procurement and construction of all the infrastructure. We can do all of that. And so, our main offering in the fleet electrification space is what we call “charging as a service.” So most of the renewable energy assets that NextEra has, we own and operate these assets over long periods of time. So with the fleet electrification with charging infrastructure, or charging as a service models similar to that, in that we absorb all the upfront costs and the capital expenditure for the infrastructure, and then you pay for that over a period of time, similar to a vehicle lease, which makes a lot of sense for a lot of the managers who are doing fleet leasing.

Elena: Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s huge, especially when you’re undertaking such a huge project with electrifying your fleet. So speaking of which, I had to ask you about Domino’s. We chatted about this a little bit before we hit the record button is the commercials are everywhere. Domino’s now has this electrified fleet of what is it 800 custom branded 2023 Chevy Bolt EVs right there now the largest electric pizza delivery fleet in the country. So Nate, what is your hot take on Domino’s and the new electrified fleet?

Nate: Well, I think it’s a great way to differentiate your brand and demonstrate their commitment towards sustainability goals. I also think that there’s absolutely an operational cost savings opportunity and case to be made by switching from gas vehicles to electric vehicles. For pizza delivery, you’re not carrying heavy loads. You have a readily available proven vehicle, the Chevy Bolt that’s been in the market for quite a long time. And then a lot of managers / route operators, they know exactly how far approximately how far to drive every day. So they know when they’re going to need to charge typically, I don’t think many pizza delivery companies are driving more than 250 mile range, but there’s definitely going to be a component of charging infrastructure that has to be in play here at the retail stores where these vehicles are going to dispatch out out. But again, I think it’s a great move for them. It helps them with their brand recognition differentiates them from their competitors and should add profit to the bottom line through operational costs.

Elena: Yeah, when I saw the announcement, I was like, Oh, this is a question I gotta ask Nate, because this is right in your wheelhouse here. What are some of the plans for 2023 for NextEra Energy? What are you excited about?

Nate: I’ll start with three things. Number one, we have an announced joint venture with Daimler Trucks and BlackRock investments. So it’s pens down, we are moving forward. The concept is highway charging. So it’s not limited to Daimler Trucks freight liners, it’s available to anyone. So they’re large class six to eight trucks that are beginning to be electrified, we’re going to have highway charging in the Pacific Northwest and in California. So that’s a really exciting development. And then one of the other things that we’re going to be doing, we have identified locations, they’re going to be in New York City, and Oakland, California area, where we’re going to be setting up we’re going to be calling ePorts and ePorts is our term for what I would call a charge or a multi use charging hub. So if you’re a fleet and do not want to make the investment into electric vehicle charging infrastructure at your facilities, or maybe you’re in a situation where you’re going to be moving locations where you’re just not sure where to go for depot charging, then you would be able to park your vehicles, our facilities overnight, and it would be a subscription model. So if you needed access to charging at any time that would be one tier. If you wanted to be more passive, that would be another for example, your vehicles needed to come in during the day for an opportunity charge, there will be parking for the drivers who would be using these electric vehicles to leave their personal vehicles there and also a place where they can relax and use the restroom similar to what you might see like a truck stop. So for the joint venture with Daimler Trucks and Black Rock, it’s all about highway charging for us. So those are the things that we’re really excited about in 2023 and then some of the events I like to attend number one is ACT. The work truck show in Indianapolis in March is always a good one in fleet.

Elena: Amazing Nate, no really exciting on that Daimler announcement it’s really cool. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing that in the news and everyone go and connect with Nate if you haven’t already. Absolutely connect with him on LinkedIn and any other way that you’d like listeners to connect with you?

Nate: LinkedIn it’s definitely a place where I frequent and I’d love to hear from anybody that has an interest in talking about fleet electrification.

Elena: Amazing. Thank you so much, Nate. And this has been a pleasure. I’m so glad you had a little bit of time in your day to chat about electrified fleets. Thank you so much for your time.

Nate: You’re welcome. Absolutely.