The logistics industry will help advance the development of electric vehicles, writes DHL chief Ken Allen in the Huffington Post.

DHL is a founding partner of the Formula E championship and is convinced that the new racing series will help in its drive towards adopting low carbon delivery methods.

Despite all the focus on private cars and individual consumers, the logistics industry is arguably the place where the prospects for electric vehicles have been thrown into the sharpest relief. Arguably, this is where the economics of the technologies are put to their toughest test, as buyers of vehicles – usually transport companies – look to find the optimal trade-off between operating performance (including various factors such as reliability, speed and load) and total cost (taking into account both the purchase price and the running and maintenance costs over a vehicle’s life-time).

As the world’s biggest transport company, we have committed to improve our carbon efficiency, with our vehicle fleet an important factor. Electric is highly likely to play a big role in that effort, although our positive experience so far has also highlighted some of the major challenges that still hold it back. Range remains a challenge, with electric vehicles still contrasting unfavourably with conventional fuel types for operations over long distances or intense daily delivery schedules. This could be addressed through improvements in charging infrastructure or better battery capacity.

Purchase prices are also coming down, but the overall costs can still be higher for many types of transport operations. One reason for this could be that many manufacturers are simply adapting their petrol or diesel vehicles to accommodate an electric battery, as opposed to designing vehicles to perform optimally on an electric platform. Despite the challenges, we still share Formula E’s enthusiasm about electric technology. Indeed, we will increase our electric fleet by at least 500 vehicles in 2015, and we acquired a company last year that produces an electric vehicle (the StreetScooter) specifically to meet our delivery requirements in cities.

huffingtonpost.co.uk