PepsiCo has shared some rare insights into its new electric semi rigs and how its employees are responding to them in a video put together by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE).
The multi-national food and beverage company is running 21 Tesla Semis, some up to 700km a day on regional haul routes, out of its Sacramento, California, distribution centre.
It is one of 10 fleets selected for the NACFE’s Run on Less E-Depot year-long study, which is focussed on fleets with large numbers of electric trucks and the infrastructure a depot needs to maintain them. The organisation hopes to learn and share best practices for scaling electric trucks at depots from one or two, to more than 15.
PepsiCo’s facility, as shown in the 12-minute video, features solar-powered collection technology that helps feed 700-kW chargers. These are used for the Tesla Semis already operating out of the facility, but are also servicing electric yard trucks and a fleet of Ford eTransit service vans.
Currently, the facility is about halfway through its conversion to electric trucks. Additional charging capabilities will be added as needed to satisfy the demands once the fleet is 100 per cent electric.
“Battery electric vehicles are essential for us, and it’s really grounded in our duty cycle,” said PepsiCo Transformation and Strategy Director, Amanda Devoe.
“We feel that the battery electric vehicle is the most advantageous in our decarbonisation strategy.”
The Sacramento distribution centre, which is leading the company’s charge into electric vehicles, is the first of many PepsiCo is planning to build across North America. The company’s overall goal is to reach a 75 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2040.
In other news, Western Australian mining services company, Mineral Resources, aims to deploy 120 fully autonomous road trains along a private route.
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