Chris Wolfe: 0:05

Optimise it for sustainability. But at the same time, flexibility. I think I hope you will help us do that. Help all of us. Because it's going to shine a light on all those. An efficiency system. A real time.

Tom Raftery: 0:20

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. Where ever you are in the world? This is the Digital Supply chain podcast. The number one podcast focussing on the digitisation of Supply chain. And I'm your host, Global vice president of SAP. Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone, welcome to the Digital Supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show to day I have Chris. Chris, would you like to introduce yourself?

Chris Wolfe: 0:47

Hi, Tom. Yeah, my name is Chris Wolfe. I'm the CEOs PowerFleet Inc. We're a public company that specialises machine, the Machine IoT and fleet management services across a whole plethora of at asset types.

Tom Raftery: 1:01

Superb. And Chris, I shouldn't really have asked you to introduce yourself because you've been on the show before and we had a great conversation in the past. So it's a welcome back, I should say really.

Chris Wolfe: 1:10

Ok. Thank you very much, Tom. Good to be here.

Tom Raftery: 1:13

And for anyone who missed that episode, tell me a little bit more about PowerFleet.

Chris Wolfe: 1:18

Yeah. Our it is actually a combination of two companies that we're literally a year old is a public company or ticker symbol, P.W. F.L.. We have operations around the globe. We have five hundred and fifty thousand actually over five hundred fifty thousand mobile subscribers. Our vertical market focus is very important, especially for your podcast is supply chain. And that breaks down into two areas logistics and what we call industrial. So we are actually one of the only M2M players that are actually on the dock and in the yard and over the road. So it's like if you want to track from Binda for the trailer to, you know, to the fork to shelf, we're the provider for that now. So we also can help you with your delivery vans, your service vehicles. It's so interesting that so many of our customers have all all the CoBots, you know, they have choices. They have containers. And by the way, they have service vehicles and they have delivery trucks. So it's like, yeah, we actually have a family of products that actually spans every mobile asset that our customers might have. And we have some nominal customers. By the way, as you remember, Tom, Publix, Wal-Mart, you just I can go down to the list, but, you know, I want to talk about non supply chain, but again, some phenomenal customers.

Tom Raftery: 2:31

And I mean, you reached out to to come back because does it rise you're seeing in the electrification of fleets? Now, this is this is something that I've been saying for a while is going to happen because we just saw last week or the week before Consumer Reports issued a report saying that the costs of running the costs for maintenance of running an electric vehicle are 50 percent of the cost of running an internal combustion engine vehicle. I assume that's a big part of why you're seeing this rise in EV's in fleets.

Chris Wolfe: 3:05

You know, it's interesting about that time, as I mentioned to you in the pre talk before we started here, as I was one of the first Tesla Roadster owners. I mean, and like I said, that's not a bragging. I really believe in electrification myself personally. And what you saw and what I saw and actually experienced firsthand is no maintenance. No, no. Yeah. It's like, you know, you just take it for granted, you know, just all the moving parts and internal combustion engine that can go wrong. It's like none of that happens. It's like, you know, it is such a simpler life. Again, you have to juxtapose that, though, against the charging and the range. Right. You know, that's always Keeley's scale of electrification is can I get the same amount of work out of, you know, this electric electrical charge vehicle versus an internal combustion vehicle, but it's coming. And by the way, battery technology is improving. Recharge rates and stations are improving. Everything is improving to the point where, you know, that's kind of a new point. As long as you can optimise the entire system to manage.

Tom Raftery: 4:09

Yeah. Yeah. We're seeing in Europe the number of passenger vehicles that have gone electric in terms of sales. The sales of new passenger vehicles has gone from three percent in 2019 to 10 percent this year and is expected to go to 15 percent next year. Now, passenger vehicles don't have the same economic case, has fleets of commercial vehicles. The fleets of commercial vehicles have a far stronger economic case. So I can see them switching even faster again.

Chris Wolfe: 4:39

Yeah, you're actually seeing that. I mean, obviously, the Amazon commercials that we all see every day right now, thousands of Amazon vans now are electrified in States Postal Service. You know, I mentioned to you earlier, it's like in Israel, we have a huge operations in Israel. The whole public transportation system will be going electric. And that's actually our team right now is actually helping them with the whole issue of like power optimisation, charging optimisation, pricing optimisation. And when they charge. We talk about some of those things. But what's very important, though, is a lot of the grids can't sustain like right now in Israel. They can't have all the buses. One of the charge at the same time, the electric grid can handle it. Right. So you're actually not really optimise charged for the work. We actually optimise that charge for the network.

Tom Raftery: 5:28

And that's that's something that you're helping them with rather than the utility companies.

Chris Wolfe: 5:32

We're actually helping them with that, with the bus companies. And so. We actually work in a partnership between the utility company, the bus company. You know, we're the kind of the person in the middle of them with the technology to actually understand, you know, how to optimally get the buses, you know, and by the way, we help them optimise their bus routes to take advantage of the charging and capability to do the work with the charge they get because you don't really want to charge the bus full charge every time. It's a waste of time and it's also a waste of dollars. Right. Right. You know, if you if you're charging, you don't need to.

Tom Raftery: 6:09

So in other words, you could charge them to 60 or 70 percent in two thirds of the time. And that's all they need to finish the day or to do the entire route, maybe especially especially given the time difference of pricing.

Chris Wolfe: 6:23

Right. So, again, at different times of the day, specifically at night or whatever. So if you get if you can make your route and make it safely with a certain amount of charge, it's like that's the optimal charge. You don't need go beyond it, by the way. Going beyond that is not the world's going to be inefficient. So, you know, it's better to have the algorithms in place and, you know, the systems in place to help the driver, to help the bus company know exactly how to get the most out of the left fast.

Tom Raftery: 6:49

OK. OK. And, you know, I'm I am an electric vehicle owner myself. And one thing that I think people who are who who haven't driven an electric vehicle might not be aware of is that they are incredibly efficient, which is, you know, a typical electric vehicle. Eighty percent of the energy that goes into it goes to spin the wheels. The other, you know, 20 is lost in noise and heat and things like that. And that's like the opposite of an internal combustion engine vehicle where 20 percent of the energy that goes into an internal combustion engine goes to spin the wheel. The other 80 is lost in heat, under noise and so on. But the implications of that are that if you divert any of that energy into heating or cooling, for example, that reduces your range. You know it because that takes from that 80 percent. And similarly, if you drive in highway conditions versus driving in city conditions, it vastly reduces your range as well. It seriously impacts the range because you're driving faster and you've got more air pushing against the body of the car. And just from, you know, your car is trying to push air out of the way, which it isn't to the same extent in a city environment, because you're driving more slowly and you're also stopping more frequently. And, of course, as you're stopping you regenerating charge for the battery. So where I'm going with this is if we're talking about bus fleets in Israel or wherever. Typically, I imagine a lot of those buses are operating in urban environments. So they don't need to go as far. So their daily route might be maybe 200 kilometres or something like that, which should be easily covered by a single charge for a battery. But if they were intercity buses, it would be a completely different scenario. No.

Chris Wolfe: 8:40

Oh, absolutely. And by the way, topography has a big impact. That's true. So, by the way, I found that that actually had a bigger impact, whether you know, the temperature or it's just, you know, if you have to go up a steep grade, you know, the electric power to push, push the weight up, it just drains that.

Tom Raftery: 8:59

Sure.

Chris Wolfe: 8:59

So you hope there's a downhill on the other side?

Tom Raftery: 9:02

That's like my my brother in law lives in the mountains here in Spain. And when I go to visit him, when I get to him, my car is at about 30 percent battery left. I fill it up there from his just plug into the normal two pin plug. And then when I drive home the I get home with 60 percent in the tank because, you know, I'm driving downhill most of the way. It's hilarious.

Chris Wolfe: 9:23

That's exactly it. I mean, I do think, though, as the battery technology improves and the amount of charge, you know, that you know, and the speed of charge, I think the charging stations now. I remember when I first got my electric car, it would take hours, you know, to get a charge. You know, now you get a quick charge and you can get to 80 percent of charge in like 20 minutes or 30 minutes. I mean, that's almost like filling up at a gas station. I think that kind of makes it more normalised. And it's hard to change human behaviour, human process. So I think that's some of the key breaking point said that.

Tom Raftery: 9:59

Yeah. And the other things that are happening and you're right about all those other things that are happening, of course, is the price of the batteries dropping around 20 percent a year and the energy density, the batteries increasing five to eight percent a year. So it's gone up three times since 2010, threefold since 2010. So when you bought, for example, the Renaults Zoe in 2012, it had a range of one hundred and forty five kilometres. The 2019 version has a range of 400 kilometres. Same price. Same. Battery pack. But just higher density batteries gone into it. And that, you know, that means that the 2022 or 2023 version of the Renault Zoe, you would have a range of six hundred kilometres or similar or whatever it is. And, you know, it it keeps going like that. If you look at any of the main cars, many the main electric vehicles, cars with say on offer today, things like the Volkswagen, ID3 or ID4. They're coming in at around four to five hundred kilometres. The model three. Model Y, model S. They're all around the four to five hundred kilometres. The the take on the Porsche Taycan. That's a very high end one. That's that's between 350, I think, or 400, depending on how you drive it. But, you know, the the the range of the cars is going up and up to the point where a lot of them now are in the four to five hundred kilometre range. And it would be a long day day's drive, four or five hundred kilometres, you know, and you would you would definitely want that 20 to 30 minute stop to allow it to fill up and allow yourself to empty the bladder and fill up on food as well.

Chris Wolfe: 11:42

Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, because usually in the United States, that's one of the biggest hindrances is Americans love long drives. All right. We love our cars and we love trips. And when the initial Teslas came out, it was like 270 miles. Right. Charge like two miles per charges like yike. You know, it's like that then. So a lot of us. And by the way, before Tesla started a lot, you know, a lot of us started our own charging stations, you know, funding, charging stations to get to certain points. Now, thank goodness, you know, then Tesla took it up and move that forward. But the key is like what you just said is when you get to this mile, as it would normally drive in a day, you're totally exhausted. I mean, I think right then you have, you know, a, you know, equilibrium, right. You know, internal combustion or electrification. Why not go electric? Right. Because I just as far as I normally would have, I'm still going to stop with the red roof and and go to sleep. You know, I wake up in the morning and by the way, you know, I do think that charging infrastructure is now getting to the point, even in large geographies like the United States, where you can get a charge, you can find someplace to get a charge. And by the way, your car, your vehicle, your truck will tell you where to charge. You know, it'll tell you long before you need to get there. So, yeah.

Tom Raftery: 13:02

Yeah, it's true. It's it's been fascinating to watch Volkswagen's embrace of electric, you know, because they've had reputation issues, haven't they? And they've they they've needed to embrace that to try and take the shine off to you. The the diesel gate crisis that they've gotten through. But they've they've they've rolled out charging stations all over the US under the electrified American brand, which was part of the settlement they reached. And now they're they're rolling out the ID3 and the ID4. I took I took an ID3 for a test drive last week. And while it was a sweet car to drive, I got to tell you.

Chris Wolfe: 13:37

Oh really? Yeah, that's actually pretty interesting. I should probably try that one.

Tom Raftery: 13:41

And I don't think they're available in the US. They're going straight to the ID4 for in the US and the ID4 for is not out yet. They've started production and they I think they say shipping will be early next year.

Chris Wolfe: 13:56

And it's kind of interesting when you bring out the like Volkswagen is rolling out charging stations, Tesla's rolling out charging stations. I was always the one that never understood why the why the utility companies didn't do it themselves. I mean, you think about it like they could have been the next fuelling company, like they could've been the next X, Exxon, whatever, or marathon or whatever. It's like you would have just pulled in to Ohio Edison or, you know, American Electric Power is charging stations. And I like somehow I just think they totally missed the opportunity that because they only.

Tom Raftery: 14:30

Right. Yeah. And it's good to it's going to mean a huge uptick in demand for their product. You know, it's I think the vast majority of us who own electric vehicles we charge at home. And I just I have a charger. I have a seven kilowatt charger, but I don't use it that often because I don't do a lot of mileage. So, you know, every maybe four or five days, I'll just plug it into the normal tubin, plug in the wall. We have 220 volts here in Europe. So it you know, that's enough to bring it from maybe it's gone down to, you know, 50 or 60 percent and just top it back up. You know, overnight are a couple of hours at the weekend from the sun is shining and I've got the solar panels, you know, that'll just bring it back up to 100 again in a couple of hours, so.

Chris Wolfe: 15:14

Yeah. And by the way, you know, because we're both in supply chain people. Right. You think about like the vans that are out there now with the same kind of range. I mean, you or even better range because they have more opportunity to carry more battery load. But usually it's just to me, it's like they always go back to the depot at night. They can always get cheque. Yes. So any kind of home delivery store, you know, stores or Ron. Anything like that to me, is just right. You know, for electrification and you see it happening.

Tom Raftery: 15:43

And so to go get to our earlier point, they're operating primarily in urban environments as well. So they don't need to have, you know, 500 kilometres range because it's very rare, you know, an Amazon type delivery vehicle would be driving 500 kilometres in a day.

Chris Wolfe: 15:59

Exactly. And by the way, now the forklift on the it gets to on the back is also electrified. Right. You know, think about it back in the day. I mean, you know, it's used to be all internal combustion. Yeah. Yeah. Now it's like all moving to electrification. So I. I think you're going to see the whole supply chain where it can be, you know, it's going to be electrified. And I think the over the road segment is still, you know, again, there's work being done. But, you know, the Tesla over the road. Trucks and the Niccola, those. But again, that's the hardest nut to crack is just to make sure you got the you know, it can do the range again and that the range driving across Wyoming, the range when you drive over the Rockies.

Tom Raftery: 16:41

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me, I watched a couple of episodes of The Long Way Up the last couple of nights. I don't know if you've seen that. It's it's on Apple TV. Plus it's a it's a documentary documentary. It's it's a it's kind of a documentary, I guess. It's a series with Ewan McGregor and his friend Charley Boorman, where they're driving the Harley Davidson LiveWires from Tierra del Fuego all the way up to Los Angeles. And they've got two Rivian support vehicles with them. So it's all electric motorbikes and Rivian trucks driving from the wilds of the southern tip of South America all the way up to South America, Chile, Paraguay, all the way up through Central America. Right. All the way up to Los Angeles. So that highway. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I saw in EnelX are rolling out chargers on that. No. Off the back of that documentary. It's really it's it's like I don't have to call a documentary. It's it's a docu series. I suppose it's probably the correct term for it because it's it's a lot of episodes.

Chris Wolfe: 18:19

Yeah. By the way, it's like it's always been my dream to ride my motorcycle down the Panamerican Highway.

Tom Raftery: 18:24

There you go. Get a LiveWire. And there's no no. You have a chance. In terms you mentioned, the forklifts are going electric and delivery vehicles are going electric. Just that. I mean, does that have any impact? Because you said you cover both spaces. You covered, you know, the whole forklift side of things and then the whole delivery and logistics side of things as well. So does that have an implication for for powerfully and what you're delivering to your clients?

Chris Wolfe: 18:49

I t's kind of interesting, is it because what we do is it's access control. You know, make sure the right person is on the right vehicle at the right time, make sure they're certified to be on the right vehicle, whether it's a truck or a forklift, et cetera. Make sure they do their ocean checklist. There's a lot more to it than just say, where is it? What is it doing? And by the way, whether it's internal combustion or electric, I still want to know where is it? What is it doing? Right. I mean, you think about all the value props that we bring and have brought to internal combustion. Yeah, we were doing the same thing here on electric vehicle. So but what we're adding to that, though, is, hey, what's the state of the battery? What's the charge of the battery? Should you get it? Should you like if you're in the dock and, you know, should you take your forklift and take it and go get it charged, you know, after this next load or after this next pick? And the same with the over the road trucks. It's just, hey, we can actually give you a lot more information now. You know, are the batteries holding up? Is your charge holding up or what do you need to do to optimise your if your charge and make sure you get the most work out of it? Possibly can, but it varies very similar, by the way, because it doesn't really matter. Even maintenance cycles. Right. You know, maintenance cycles are still going to be based on usage. Yeah. It's just time. Right. Yeah. That's the nice thing about our technology is instead of you just saying he wants a year. But I go cheque this thing out, it's like wasn't a little bit more audit on how it was used. It's something you use roughly. I mean, and by the way, maybe the inspection reports are saying, hey, there's tire problems on this view all the time. Well, it's like maybe that once you get into the shop. That's right. I mean that. It doesn't matter if it's internal combustion or not. They haven't gotten the way to get rid of wheels. Right.

Tom Raftery: 20:31

You've mentioned that there's an uptick in electrification and you mentioned Israeli. Are you seeing it in other places? I know you've seen it another. Well, what categories of vehicle are you seeing it and specifically. Yeah.

Chris Wolfe: 20:44

So not only in Israel, but all all across. You mentioned Europe. We're seeing that in Europe as well, primarily in the delivery vehicles. You probably knows you're in Europe all the time and you live there. It's like classifications equals in Europe are a little smaller. I mean, they typically tend to the smaller side so they can get through the roads. Right. You know, you've got livery trucks and got to fit through some of the tiny spots. So, again, most of those are going to be electrified or moving the electrification, the home delivery, this model of shop delivery. You'll see those move to electrification. We are seeing that right now, very small countries. It's kind of interesting. You're actually taking the lead. Like Malta has a big effort going on right now. You being a European, you know, that's a great vacation spot. I a very small. But it's like, why not? Yeah, they have sun and, you know, it's like they could go look Asian, like in Brazil there's some like Frication. But again, Brazil's got a landmass that we do. And it's just very difficult. So, you know, because of the landmass and the topography.

Tom Raftery: 21:52

So, Chris, you've talked quite a bit about what a fan of sustainability you are and hence the conversation around electric vehicles. And, you know, you owning one of the first roadsters that was there was made. But you know, where where to from here. We're starting to see a rise in the electrification of transportation. That's great. What do you see as next? What's the next big thing that's coming down the line?

Chris Wolfe: 22:20

Yeah. So, you know, again, if you look at what we were talking about, just the total inefficiencies in the entire system, you got to know where your assets are. And by the way, all your assets, like if you look at certain parts of the market, you know, they like the trailer to track the ratio, still three to one. And by the way, in private fleets, it's even higher than that sometimes. Now, again, it's like there's always that balance. So I have to have equipment for the surge. I have to have equipment or, you know, you know, just in case I need it. You know, there's always a safety thing. Well, we've actually found when we put in our technology, sometimes even on the dock, it's like we we had one site where there were 600 forklifts. There's a large manufacturing, 600 forklifts. We found out that it was roughly 20 percent or under you lights, 20 percent. We found out 15 percent. We could just not have. And that's by doing, you know, in-depth analysis of how many units are used when even taking into account peak times. And by the way, the operational people running the company or they thought they were running a very efficient company. Right. And they actually are equipment primarily for safety and security and to meet ocean requirements and a side benefit. Wow. So all of a sudden, you know, 15 percent. I mean, that's a big chunk of change. If you're talking. Like, you know, there's like 70, 80 forklifts. So you can just pull out and it's not going to have a material impact. So it's kind of fun, but, you know, it's not going to have a material impact on getting the work done. So, again, I think our systemic problems are, hey, we're still as a supply chain globally, supply chain locally, still too inefficient. And by that, you know, I think that's where IoT te 5G know, getting that enhanced visibility. So that way you can run it through the machine learning it can run it through the optimisation. It'll show us the bottlenecks. The choke points that we can actually say, hey, you know, if we just can change this or by the way maybe hurt people I should partner with. So if I'm always running like east the West loads and you're always running west to east loads, you know, and we used to look at that when I was in logistics. It's like, you know, just maybe maybe there should just be more like a trailer exchanges or load swaps or things like that to just totally maximise the supply chain. And by by the way, by maximising the supply chain, you need less resources to do the work, which means you don't have to build the resources you save. You know, sustainability there. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there is a daisy chain and it's like, how do you optimise it but not replicate what we did with what happened with Covid. Right. So we got so specialised that, you know, like, you know, we had these supply chains that are four ball. Can we have the supply chains that are for retail? And by the way, they're not really easily commingled. I think we just need greater minds thinking about, you know, how do you optimise it for sustainability. But at the same time, flexibility, I think IoT will help us do. Now, all of this is going to shine a light on all those inefficiencies in the system. A real time.

Tom Raftery: 25:29

Very good. Very good. Chris, we are well past the 20 minute mark, which is, you know, usually when I try and wind down the podcast, is there anything that we've not brought up that you think people should be aware of? Any question I've not asked you that you know, you think I should have.

Chris Wolfe: 25:46

Right now, Tom? No, not really. I think we had a good conversation. I enjoyed it. I always do. And wish you luck with your electric vehicle and happy charging.

Tom Raftery: 25:57

Thank you. Excellent. Excellent. So, Chris, if people want to know more about yourself or about power fleet or any of these, I mean, the things we talked about today, where would you have me direct them?

Chris Wolfe: 26:06

powerfleet dot com, we're there. And you can reach out to powerfleet dot com. If you want to get to me directly, that's fine. Just when you go. Go there. Go to Info at PowerFleet and use the info link and you can actually just ask for me.

Tom Raftery: 26:21

Superb. Superb brilliant. OK Chris. That's been fantastic. Thanks again for coming on the show today.

Chris Wolfe: 26:26

Hey, thanks Tom. Appreciate it.

Tom Raftery: 26:28

OK. We've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to SAP dot com slash digital supply chain or or simply drop me an email to Tom Dot Raftery at SAP dot com if you'd like to show. Please don't forget to subscribe to it. And your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find a show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.