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“What we're going to see during 2024 is a real focus on our hybrid products in the 300 series range,” said Daniel Petrovski, head of product strategy at Hino Australia, talking with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls. “They’ve gone through a massive increase in orders.”

Sales of the hybrid 300 have risen from about 50 a year to an order bank of some 350 as of late November when the podcast was recorded. He said lead-time on the vehicle was sitting at about six months.

Jess Bala, General Motors new managing director for Australia and New Zealand talks with Fleet News Group podcast host Caroline Falls about the US car company’s plans to bring the Cadillac brand down under, starting with the electric powered luxury SUV Lyriq in 2024.

 

“The Cadillac brand, globally is going through a very big transformation right now to an all EV portfolio which we will achieve by the end of the decade in 2030,” said Bala, adding, “And when you look at what is happening in Australia and New Zealand from an EV transformation standpoint, and how tech savvy our customers are, it just feels like the perfect time to introduce the Cadillac brand and bring this next generation of EV vehicles down under.”

Fleet News podcast host Caroline Falls talks with Collin Jennings, head of government relations and advocacy at the Motor Traders’ Association of NSW about training up the automotive workforce in Australia to meet the challenge of the increasing prevalence of electric vehicles, particularly for mechanics.

 

“In, Australia, just in mechanics — and this is excluding areas like auto electricians and body repairers and tow truck drivers — there’s just over 116,000 employed in motor mechanics. EVs are a different system, they're a different vehicle, and they require different skills,” said Jennings.

In this Fleet News Group podcast with host Caroline Falls, Dave Sanders, co-founder of Bestrane, talks about the escalation in interest in sustainable transport solutions and how his company which has eliminating waste at its heart helps transport and logistics groups.

“If I look at Origin Energy, for example, who are right in the crosshairs of the sustainability issue. Right now, they're in an industry that is struggling to understand what it means to be sustainable in supplying gas … From a fleet perspective, they've got lots of vehicles running around providing a service to a lot of Australia that doesn't have a great alternative right now; that may not be the case in the future. So from a sustainability perspective, they're trying to understand how can we do more with a minimum fleet necessary. And that's really the sort of services that Bestrane provide, not only on a one- time basis, but more importantly, over a much longer period of time.”

Sanders said conversations about improving a company’s sustainability have reached board level now. 

Lex Forsyth, CEO and co-founder of Janus Electric, an Australian startup that converts diesel engine prime movers to battery electric, talks about xxxx and xxxx in this edition of the Fleet News Group podcast.

Janus Electric was founded in 2020 when co-founders Lex Forsyth and Bevan Dooley tested an idea to convert a diesel prime mover to a battery electric vehicle.

“We thought, well, let's give this a go and take an old prime mover, which was 10 years old at the time and get a rolling prototype,” said NSW central coast based Forsyth.

A few busy years later, trucks number 17 and 18 are being built at the Janus Electric facility and they have orders for another 100 or so. Some 44 people work there.

In this Fleet News Group podcast, host Caroline Falls talks with Dickson Leow, General Manager at IM group, and also of its unit Infinitev, which saves spent electric vehicle batteries from landfill. 

The interview was just a day after Leow presented at the inaugural Australian Battery Recycling and Manufacturing Summit.