Optimising vehicles and charging infrastructure for council fleet to transition to EVs

KTN is supporting the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) to identify innovative solutions for significant and immediate challenges in support of the CCR City Deal. CCR are looking for innovative deployment technology to enable zero emission council fleets. Through this IX challenge, Optimising vehicles and charging infrastructure for council fleet to transition to EVs. CCR are looking for Digital solutions to allow the right procurement decisions to be made. CCR comprises of 10 Local Authorities, and solutions that come forward should bring benefit and scalability to allow eventually deployment across all LAs.

At a workshop this summer a number of challenges and opportunities that this KTN iX™ challenge will address were identified.

An example is Caerphilly County Borough Council which has a fleet of around 600 vehicles.  They are seeking to transition this fleet to ultra low emission vehicles, with around 200 petrol and diesel vehicles being on 5 year leases which run out over the next 18 months, needing to be replaced.  These are predominantly small and medium sized vans.

The Council has data on the vehicle types, the mileage that each undertakes per day, the type of work that they undertake, and where they are based. One of the council’s services have a predominantly return to home operation with 90 out of the 95 vehicles being taken home at night.  70% of these homes do not have off street parking suitable for home charging.  Information is also available on all the buildings and land, such as offices, schools, libraries, depots, leisure centres etc. in the communities where charging points could potentially be located.

The challenge is to develop digital solutions to be able to plan the optimal solution in terms of number and size of vehicles, the exact location and size of each charge point and to model their usage pattern based on shift and route information of each vehicle, this is to avoid the need for unnecessary chargers.

Solution providers using digital twin technology that would allow expansion to other areas would be welcomed along with other innovative solutions.

Any solution should be flexible to allow different scenarios to be run with the ability to identify comparable cost and CO₂ emissions.

The CCR stakeholders (including the participating local authorities) are now actively inviting the UK’s innovation and solution capability to come forward and engage with this commercial opportunity.

Proposals are welcome for:

• Existing market-ready technologies
• Established solutions from other sectors of industry which can be adapted for this application.
• Development proposals based on existing competences.
• Universities and catapults with solutions above TRL 5 +

Potential solutions may come from;

• Automotive
• Rail
• Construction and infrastructure
• Heavy engineering
• The Energy Sector
• Data & analytic companies
• Software providers
• or from organisations with relevant expertise operating in any industry sector.

Successful applicants will be invited to

• Pitch their solutions at a KTN chaired session attended by representatives of the participating Local Authorities and the CCR
• Potential access to innovation deployment through the CCR Challenge Fund Programme (Challenge Fund – Cardiff Capital Region)  which runs between 2021 until 2024,funding is initially being made available for market testing and exploring LEV Fleet Innovation opportunities for the region, aligning with, and building on existing infrastructure investments with a view to unlocking commercial opportunities and addressing public services needs in the region.
• Presentations can be uploaded to KTNs Innovation Marketplace which is open to all Local Authorities

Cost requirement and market opportunity

• Costs will be proportional to deployability and demonstrated benefit
• For the right product, the solution could be used across the clients portfolio and wider
• This challenge offers a multi-year development opportunity for the right solution.

This opportunity is open to both academic and industrial practitioners