The Biden administration’s emphasis on electric trucks to decarbonize U.S. transportation will require a technological revolution, but early adopters of the vehicles say the commercial success of mass electrification will come down to something in addition to technology: the driver.

The importance of training electric vehicle drivers accustomed to diesel systems was a focus of the tenth and last webinar hosted Tuesday by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency and the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Two companies that have been converting smaller conventional delivery trucks to battery electric drive trains found that they had to run classes for drivers accustomed to driving traditional trucks.

“It’s a new technology.  There is no dumb question. There is no simple question. Every question is really important,” said Julie Johnson, head of enterprise business development for Lightning eMotors, based in Loveland, Colo. The company has been converting conventionally powered light trucks to high-tech electric for more than a decade, and Johnson has heard all of the questions.

Driver training is imperative, she said, producing a graphic that compared the mileage attainable by two similar electric box trucks over different routes driven at different times of the same day when outside temperatures were in the upper 30s F.

One driver’s electric consumption was measured at 1.20 miles/kWh, or 0.83 kWh/mile, on a 61.7-mile route.  A second driver traveling over a 56.9-mile route scored 1.04 miles/kWh, or 0.96 kWh/mile.

Further analysis showed significant differences in the amount of power used by each vehicle’s HVAC system as well as the amount of time the trucks were energized but not moving. Predictably, the driver who kept moving scored a higher mileage.

“I think what’s really great to see is there is the correlation between the idle [time] and the utilization, compared to the efficiency of that day’s routes between those two vehicles,” Johnson said. However, she added, making every driver comfortable with the new electric drive system was the overall goal of the tracking and analysis.

“There is a lot that has to be taken into consideration,” she stressed. “When we first launched these trucks, it was in the dead of winter, and at one point I heard, ‘Well, maybe we should just have the drivers turn their heaters off. I immediately said, ‘We definitely don’t want to do that. That is not really an option.’“

Johnson on many occasions spent time with drivers in the electrified trucks on a typical delivery day.  ”What I’ve seen is that drivers get into the trucks [after driving] them day in and day out, and really the transition and the comfort level and the trust of the technology and adapting to it happens very quickly, but it’s different for each individual driver.”

Simple Mechanics, Complex Design

Jim Castelaz, founder and chief technology officer of California-based Motiv Power Systems, said getting the drivers and support staff familiar and comfortable with the new electric systems — including the advanced electronics — is critical.

“Electric vehicles rely heavily on software that’s built into the vehicle and the embedded computers and electronics that are built into the vehicle. This means the vehicle is mechanically very simple, but the complexity is in the software and control, and this drives a paradigm shift as far as how the vehicles are used and upgraded and how drivers are trained,” Castelaz said.

“To point out one major advantage of having the complexity in software is that oftentimes vehicles can be upgraded and performance increased with only a software change, which Motiv can do remotely to vehicles over the air, and securely,” he said.

Recalling the conversion of a small fleet in Sacramento, Castelaz said his company provided driver training for all the drivers of the vehicles and others who might be responsible for plugging them in or supporting them in other ways.

“What we found is that this [training] is enormously important for getting drivers and other staff comfortable with the idea that they’re now using electric vehicles because it really is a paradigm shift in how they think about the vehicles. The vehicles will look almost identical. And in many ways, they’re very similar,” he said.

“Oftentimes I think drivers and other staff don’t realize that initially, and they tend to have some hesitancy about this new technology and concern that maybe instead of helping them get their job done better, it might slow them down or get in the way of their job. So, we want to be there to educate them and show them that electric trucks are actually going to help them get their job done more efficiently,” he said.

The point is to get drivers comfortable with the technology, he added, and “to understand that the vehicle works a lot more like their cell phone: every night you could plug it in, and maybe you don’t use your cell phone battery all the way to where it’s completely drained before you plug it in. You just plug it in every night because you’re not using it and it’s good time to charge.”

The real point of the training is to help the drivers “think of the vehicle like that rather than [with an] internal combustion engine mindset. We fill up the tank, and we empty the tank, and we fill up the tank.”

Even turning on an EV is a slightly different experience, he said, because it does its own self-evaluation and will alert the driver immediately of problems or needed upgrades like a cell phone or computer does.

Thoughtful Driving

But the driving experience is where the major difference in experience occurs, Castelaz said. Acceleration is smooth and immediate. But the gear selection familiar to any truck driver “is not really a selection of gears because there’s no transmission on [electric] motor vehicles; it’s just adjustment of the amount of regenerative braking,” he said.

Electronically controlled regenerative braking means that if the truck is not accelerating, a kind of braking begins to occur that results in electric production by generators using the kinetic energy of the wheels.  That technology also saves wear on the truck’s braking system, he said, while adding electrons to the truck’s battery.

“What we find is that with proper training and the initial experience, where we’re holding their hands and walking them through getting oriented and acquainted with the vehicle, that very shortly thereafter any skepticism is gone, and typically it’s actually difficult to get drivers out of electric vehicles once they try them because the driving experience is just so far superior to an internal combustion vehicle,” Castelaz said.

PepsiCo/Frito-Lay Fleet Manager Ken Marko said his company has been running alternative fuel trucks and cars for several years, including compressed natural gas-fueled tractor-trailer rigs operating on renewable natural gas (typically from landfills or aerobic digesters), propane and electricity.

“Range anxiety was one of the things that we had to deal with, and we had to help drivers understand what the capabilities of the vehicles were and how to manage their routes and make sure that they were going to be able to return home each day,” he said.

“We tried to empower our drivers and help them understand some of the new terms that they were going to have to deal with, like kilowatt and kilowatt hours per mile, efficiency and how it’s measured, and overall range capability … to give them the ability to manage that as well.”

But drivers have also had to learn that mileage obtainable in an EV may vary, Marko said.

“There are a lot of different factors that play into the overall range capability, [including] temperature and terrain. We talked to our drivers about it to help them understand that it’s not just a one size fits all,” he said.

While a vehicle might have a 100-mile range, the temperature on a given day or particular route characteristics could affect its overall efficiency range capability, Marko said.

“Part of it was just helping [drivers] understand how they can contribute to the overall efficiency as well, just by the way they drive these vehicles. It’s not just a jump into the vehicle, push the throttle down and go.”