Thrive In Construction with Darren Evans

Ep. 72 The Excavator Pollution Problem in Cities: Why Small Machines Are a Big Climate Threat

• Darren Evans

Share episode

Send us a text

In this episode of Thrive in Construction, Darren sits down with Mats Bredborg, Head of Customer Cluster at Volvo Construction Equipment, to expose a little-known crisis: the massive pollution caused by small diesel excavators in our cities.
With over 5,000 machines in London alone contributing the equivalent emissions of 100,000 cars, Mats breaks down how Volvo Group is tackling this challenge head-on with electrification, innovation, and collaboration.

Key topics include:
• Why small machines produce disproportionately high emissions
• The air quality crisis most people don’t realise is happening
• Volvo’s vision for electric, hydrogen, and hybrid machinery
• What “never surrender” means for sustainable transformation
• Use-case testing, customer co-creation, and how Transport for London is leading the charge
• Why smart charging logistics (not infrastructure) is the real key to net-zero

If you care about climate action, public health, or construction innovation, this episode delivers deep insights into one of the most urgent – and overlooked – sustainability opportunities.

Find us on: 

Links:

Mats Bredborg's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/matsbredborg/
Volvo Construction Equiptment: https://www.volvoce.com/

Support the show

Speaker 1:

So the biggest division within Volvo Group is Volvo Trucks and we are about 20% to 25% of the revenue of Volvo Group, which is the construction equipment business. And the construction equipment business was just a small part of Volvo, but we had a joint venture with an American company back in the 80s and created this company and it's more or less created from buying about 20 different companies and consolidating them and we are like the European alternative to the big four, like the Caterpillars, the Hitachi, what problem are Volvo trying to solve in the world?

Speaker 1:

I mean we are a diesel engine manufacturer and we are one of the biggest of the big engine manufacturers in the world. I mean we are a diesel engine manufacturer, so we are, and we are one of the biggest of the big engine manufacturers in the world, so we are part of that problem to get to net zero. So, but we believe that is the thing that we need to do. So we need to transform our whole business. I mean, the business more or less started with that. We were very good at doing a diesel engine from the trucks. And where more can you put this diesel engine into? You can put it into buses, you can put it into construction equipment. And then we bought up companies and then got their engine out, got our engine in and it's a very, very good engine that we have and that has been a competitive advantage. Its fuel consumption is best in class. I mean we got very low emission levels on that.

Speaker 1:

So the problem we started that we've done for years is to transition out of the diesel, is to transition out of the diesel fossil fuel-based machines and trucks and buses into being a sustainable solution. And obviously there are many different ways you can go. One is electric as the source, what could be hydrogen? But you can also combine that I mean a hydrogen fuel cell, and then you have electric motors and batteries in between, where you take hydrogen to a combustion engine and run it that way, and then lucky enough is that we are big enough to be able to go down different paths, so we don't need to lock us into one technology and nobody knows what the end game is going to be. But since we've been into it that long, we see an advantage with electrification in the smaller categories, or small to mid-sized categories, and then we see hydrogen being more an example in the mid-ranges, maybe using fuel cells, and then when you come up to very low volumes but extremely big, then maybe a combustion engine could be the solution. But we're still exploring those paths.

Speaker 2:

When you say exploring it, do you mean exploring the market and seeing what interest that is out there in the market and what the demand is?

Speaker 1:

We are a technology-driven company, so we are experts and we are a lot of engineering skills. So we do, we do, so we develop those in prototype format and take them out in the marketplace and test them.

Speaker 1:

We develop those in prototype format and take them out in the marketplace and test them. So obviously, in a transformation where the stakes are high I mean, if you believe what global warming is going to lead to, then the stakes are extremely high. So then it's easy for someone to sign up to a technology and say, yeah, that technology will suit me. Sign up to a technology and say, yeah, that technology will suit me. But it's harder for them to make the investment in that technology because now it needs to be commercially viable. They still need to make money and all that good stuff.

Speaker 1:

So it's a little bit like when smartphones came, there was nobody asking for that kind of phone and it was definitely not asking the business. The business was asking for a cheaper phone, and then they started to buy a much kind of phone, and it was definitely not asking the business. The business was asking for a cheaper phone and then they started to buy a much more expensive phone. So it's a little bit like that. It's like you need to lead the way. You need to show the technology, you need to verify that it's commercially available, that it works commercially, the technical benefit and then also, of course, what the impact is on the environment.

Speaker 2:

I love that analogy that you've given about the smartphone, because I find that whole moment in time fascinating, because and you'll remember this, I'm sure you were working at the time when the BlackBerry was around, and I remember that it was a status symbol to have a BlackBerry meant that you had a responsible, well-paid, good job. And I remember that feeling that I had when I was given my first BlackBerry when I was for the company that I was working for. And then this iPhone came out. So we call we now use the term smartphone, but it was really the iPhone first of all, and I remember looking at it, thinking how does this even work? And then I remember using it and thinking this makes so much sense.

Speaker 2:

Why do I want my BlackBerry anymore? Because it's got so many buttons and my fingers are, I mean, they're not the biggest thing, but they're just definitely not small like little needles that you would need to to push those small buttons. And so there was a. There was a massive revolution that happened there because, from what I see, is the ease of use of the iPhone compared to the complexity that existed around the BlackBerry, and so I'd like to understand or know or see if that is an approach that Volvo are taking around the excavators, especially when you're looking at the electrification of it. Are those just so easy to use or is there some shift that's happening just to make it a lot easier for the end client or the end user, similar to the Apple revolution that happened?

Speaker 1:

I am also fascinated about the whole smartphone transition and I'm actually a collector of the early smartphones transition and I'm actually a collector of the early smartphones. So take different brands and what they're trying to do with this and how they're trying to get that to market. So it's amazing and and and I mean Steve Bollner from Microsoft when he said the first comment about the iPhone that they've it was so expensive and I don remember it was really dismissive, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it doesn't even have a keyboard, so it will never sell. And then the market does a completely different thing. And I think that is one of the learnings with all of this is that you can take all your logic in a business and if it's a replacement business, that logic will help you and that logic will build your business. If it's transformational, that the business is going to transform, nobody knows what the right answer is and we don't know the outcome. And the thing is that we can believe that this is the most fantastic thing. It's doing exactly what it should do and it's exactly in the right place, but if the customer doesn't want to part with their cash to buy this, nothing happens. So obviously we are a manufacturer of machines. So that's our starting point and I think that is absolutely right that we did that, that we have a full range. We're trying to build out the range, we're trying to make the range as good as possible in the market and comparable with diesel, so the same like run time and so on, and that's what we work on. But then we have to think that this machine is going to be put into a situation with a customer and then it's how easy is it to get this transformation done? How easy is it to make this happen? And that's really where the rubber hits the road and that's what we need to focus on and that's what we have been focusing on. And just as an example, so obviously you can do we have electrical machines.

Speaker 1:

Electrical machines is the most I work with. It's a smaller range. It's a technology that's been around for many, many years. We can utilize what we have in the group. We have done electric buses, we've done trucks for a long time. We can take that technology and also on the car side and put them into those machines. So we're confident about the technology. But now it's going to come to a job site in the middle of London.

Speaker 1:

I just walked from Liverpool Street to Moorgate and I walked past six compact excavators and that takes less than five minutes. So now we are in a city environment. We take out the diesel. Now we are in a city environment. We take out the diesel, we put an electric in there. Where do you plug it in? It's not that we don't have electricity around. I mean, there's plenty of electricity. We don't need that much either.

Speaker 1:

And those machines, by the way, are polluting a lot. So how do you make that transformation easy for the customer? And that's really the key. So the ones that are coming out, which I definitely believe the best machine is necessarily not going to be the winner in this race, and the transformation to electric has not really started yet. We get some very early adopters into this, but the hockey stick effect has not happened yet.

Speaker 1:

And I think the hockey stick effect, or I'm pretty sure that it will happen with the ease of use, and we're working with a very large London-based contractor, transport for London. Transport for London looks at this and says we are replacing all our buses to be electric. We're replacing our taxis to be electrified. Our delivery vans are now in this low emission zone. We have a problem with pollution which is affecting the health system. So how can we do this? How can we do this? How can we do this? And I think that is the the main thing. So now you have the one that is buying from it, the ones that are doing it and the manufacturer that is that is producing it. How do we come together to make this a reality in the market? And that is about then how do we simplify this?

Speaker 2:

there's a couple of things that you've touched on there that I want to delve deeper into, but I think that the point that you made about simplification is absolutely spot on, because people are not going to invest their time or effort or energy into something that is more complicated because we are so used to things being easier. It's easier to order food now, to catch a um a, a ride from point a to point b, or even you know catch you know a boat, a plane or whatever. To travel is just so easy now, as well as really easy to get answers to questions. When we were younger, if you wanted to know something that you didn't know or anyone else knew, you needed to find an encyclopedia, you needed to find a book or at least someone with access to one. Well, now we just carry it around in our pockets. Really really easy to find out what happened in Stockholm in 1924, who the leader of Canada was in 1826. You can just find that stuff out.

Speaker 1:

And this is the first generation that is growing up now that never leaves a group of people without knowing the answer, because I mean, in my generation we had to go to the library to find the answer, but my son and my daughter, they never leave a discussion without having the answer because they just look it up. So there is a difference and that is the ease of it. And then if you think about the industry, if you think of the general of the fossil fuel industry, I mean that infrastructure has been developed over 100 years to be perfect, to be easy, just working, and there is no problem. But that system needs to be replaced with another system. And if we then do the machines, then there are gaps in the system. I mean, they know how to get the diesel. So just as an example with this, just to get it going, I'm not. I definitely think it's the right way of looking at it. But if we just simplify that process, it's that diesel are delivered to site by a truck. So why can we not deliver electricity to the site by the truck?

Speaker 1:

Because in the machine itself, the diesel machine has a tank, we have a battery and what we tried in London is with small vans with a startup and again, volvo doesn't have all the solutions. We have the machines and we have the closest one, but we need to get the electricity. So a company that was working with charging cars on London streets, like Zip cars, that they go up and charge them that's a rental car. So we looked at those vans and said they have the right capacity and then we can connect them via telematics to our machines. That's a rental car. So we looked at those vans and said they have the right capacity and then we can connect them via telematics to our machines and then they have a software that can determine what the best charging schedule will be, depending on whether I've called it this traffic of their driving, how they're using the machines or the pattern of the machines. And then they just show up and charge the machines on the street. So all those six machines I saw coming from, coming from liverpool street, I mean those could be charged that way and then and then we're taking away all the hassle for the contract.

Speaker 1:

He doesn't need to have more experience in in in the electrification technology, doesn't need to have more experience in the electrification technology. He doesn't need to be worried about where should I get electricity. He doesn't need to drive to the electricity, the electricity comes to him and he doesn't need to call anyone to get it. So now, all of a sudden, that solution gets even simpler than a diesel machine, because a diesel machine you actually have to order up the fuel, have the fuel on site, and so on. So a more integrated technology that we are based on the process that we're there before, but refined with new technology to make it smarter.

Speaker 2:

I like that. I'm interested to know as well if you can shed any light on the amount of emissions that come from these small excavators, especially in and around London. Everyone knows that you've got that ultra low emission zone around London which causes people a lot of pain, but these excavators are not subject to any form of extra tariffs as a result of being in central London.

Speaker 1:

It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. So defend a little bit of what the mayor and the city of London are doing is that they take it step by step, and it was a big hurdle for them to get the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone and it was a big hurdle for them to get the buses and now, since 2022, I think they are only buying electrical buses and they've done the taxes. So they looked at this and normally you will start on-road and not off-road. But it is a little bit amazing when you start to look at the numbers and that's where it becomes extremely interesting. And there is no tariffs or there is no penalties of using construction machines of any. You can drive out of city hall with a 20-year-old machine that has black smoke out of it and there will be no penalties whatsoever on that. But then even more interesting is that obviously the industry over the last 25 years has started to get emission standards and those emission standards has come in effect with bigger machines and then going down to smaller machines. So if a big machine today has a lot of emission controls, a lot of emission control, you can say the same almost the same as on road, but the smaller the machine gets the less emission control and when you come to the smallest machines under the stage five regulations here in Europe, they more or less don't have to have anything. They don't have to have AdBlue or DPF like filters afterwards, or common rail or anything. It's like an old mechanical diesel engine that we love to have. And the problem is that the big machines are out in the middle of nowhere where there's no people, are fairly clean. The smaller machines are in the cities and there are many of them. There are approximately 5 000 of those smaller machines in within the ultra low emission zone and and those machines pollute as much as 100,000 cores, and 100,000 cores is like there's one million cores in circulation in London every day, so it's like 10% of that. It's the same as 10% of the cores, so there is a big impact on air quality and those are the pollutants like NOx and particulate matter. Those are the things that you can take away from or you can reduce them at least with emission controls, but those machines are outside those regulations and I would say that the other interesting thing with this is that I'm not.

Speaker 1:

When I look at what London has done, I mean it's world-leading. It's a very old city. They have really gone on to this, to being green and clean up the air, and it is the biggest low-emission zone in the world. So they've done a fantastic job. We are lagging a little bit behind. It will come. It's natural that it will come. But what I cannot fully understand is the regulations, the European regulations that if you have different power bands, if they're small or big, then you have different regulations to follow and then you brand it under stage five. And what has happened in London is that they have said there has been a lot of push that you need to have the latest regulations because that's what the cars are having. So the industry have done the right thing. They have gone to bought new machines. So the population in London is very, very new with stage five. But it doesn't give any impact. Because of that, the regulation is formed the way it is.

Speaker 2:

What is? Can you just talk about the regulation of stage five? What is that?

Speaker 1:

Can you just talk about the regulation of stage five. What is that? It's a European regulation of, so they call Euro 6 on trucks and then they have a different regulation set for off-road equipment. So they started with the stage one was 1999, and then they have gone and updated that. And if you look at the core industry and the scandals that has been around diesel cores with this, that has been under a loop and decades to refine that.

Speaker 1:

So cores and vans has very advanced technologies to clean up the cores and they can not do anything about carbon. Carbon is if you burn one liter of fuel you're going to emit 2.68 kilos of carbon. But you can do a lot about the harmful gases. That knocks on particulate matter and those regulations have been put in place since 1999 to reduce the amount of harmful pollution. And since stage one to stage five a big machine has reduced 94% of those harmful gases but the smaller machines have reduced nothing. And that is like you're buying something with this stage five certification but you're not getting the value delivered from it from a pollution point of view.

Speaker 2:

It's a really good point that you've made there, because it's the improvement that has been made in the standards of these vehicles has not stripped away or reduced the carbon. What it's done is it's changed the other harmful compounds and VOCs as that fuel burns, and that is what gives really really bad air in terms of air pollution as well. Yes, carbon will burn and that's there. We've not stopped that by changing those standards. But carbon isn't the only thing that gives bad air.

Speaker 1:

CO2 will kill us all in the future if that goes on, but it will not. It has no impact on public health when it comes to I mean, that's what we breathe Because.

Speaker 2:

CO2 is around us all the time. It's part of the air mix-up, and so that's not going to have an adverse effect on you.

Speaker 1:

No. So if you look at the ultra-low emission zones, ultra-low emission zones is to put in place so that the course follows the latest regulations of emission controls and those emission controls take away the harmful gases. It doesn't take away the CO2. So but then I mean any car manufacturer or any equipment manufacturer or truck manufacturer wants to take down their fuel consumption. So we make more fuel-saving engines and that takes away the CO2. So the less the engine consumes, the less the CO2 has come out and that the whole industry has worked on, because there is a financial benefit that we can do more work with our machines for less fuel than we produce less carbon. And we have all kinds of technologies both in the engine and hybrid systems and hydraulic system to try to get the machines to be as efficient as possible. But then on the engine itself, there are ways that with AdBlue that you can take away NOx, there are particular filter that you AdBlue that you can take away NOx, there are particular filters that you put afterwards that you can take away some of the soot which is harmful. And then the regulations.

Speaker 1:

What has happened with the regulations is that I think when they started to look at this 1999, I mean the big machines. There was only big machines. There was not that many sold to the smaller machines and there was just more manual work in the cities. They were not using compact exits. They were using compact exits, but that was a smaller part of it, and then this kind of came to the conclusion which is the wrong conclusion that we don't need to control those that much because they have very little hours on them and there is not that many of them. If we then fast forward to 2025, then out of the 125,000 excavators sold in Europe, approximately 100 of them 100,000 of them was the smaller one and they are working in the cities and then the combined of all those excavators becomes that they are the most polluted, polluting machines out there.

Speaker 2:

So radical suggestion. Why has Volvo not come up with charging stations just on the street or attached to petrol stations? I'm thinking similar to what Tesla has done with their own models to sort out the infrastructure. Or do Volvo have plans to do that?

Speaker 1:

I think it's a very good question. It's like, I mean, the success of when Tesla started was that they didn't only come with a car, they came with a full solution and nobody could match that. And that is an integrated solution. The car talks to the charging station, the car knows if the charging station is working and I have a Tesla myself. I wouldn't say that I got a Tesla because it's the best-looking car.

Speaker 2:

Or the most comfortable.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, exactly. It's rattling in the beginning, but the whole proposition of this in the UK I mean, I do a lot of hiking. I could go to Wales, I could go to Scotland, there's no problem whatsoever. The proposition is good and it's exactly what you're going towards.

Speaker 1:

The problem with construction equipment is that if you look at it in cities, it's here one day and then it's over there and then it's over there. I mean, some sites are very big, but if you look at the bulk of construction it's like utility works water, energy, telecom they're digging up the road, roadworks moves all the time. Energy, telecom they're digging up the road, road works moves all the time. So if you had a fixed charging station then that wouldn't follow the machines and the machines generally are crawler based for stability and and I mean then it takes a lot of time for them to travel to the point, to travel to electricity.

Speaker 1:

And then if we look, I mean machines today doesn't travel for diesel. Diesel comes to the machine, so the electricity comes to the machine. And that's what we're really exploring with this company called ChargeFerry, a little startup based in London, a van connected up taking the energy to the machine. It's early stages, but what we're seeing is that maybe that is the. If Tesla superchargers was the key to get this going with electric cars, maybe this is the one that's going to be the game changer for our industries in cities to have this availability of electricity by moving it around good.

Speaker 2:

I think also, with more and more cars becoming electrified on the road, it wouldn't surprise me if someone will come up with an idea to try and do that just for the general cars anyway. Um, I was speaking to a friend of mine who ran out of uh juice in his car. Who ran out of juice in his car, he ran out of juice in his Tesla and he had to push it a few meters so that he could get it charged, and just the anxiety that he was talking about in and around that at three in the morning was not great for his health.

Speaker 1:

No, no, absolutely. And I mean that is so if you think about the construction site and you think about the people that we wanted to to transition into electricity, I mean if there's no electricity, if there's a charge point, like three blocks down, I mean that's going to be in their head all the time and it's like I cannot run out of electricity. I mean I need to have enough electricity to come down there and get back again. And with this kind of thing that we bring the electricity to the machine, we take away that. And we've seen that before they would never go under 30% level because they needed to have that little backup, but now, when they have this system, they are happily going below 10. So we're using more the range in the battery itself.

Speaker 1:

And also, if you look at all the older cities in Europe, I mean the infrastructure is not there, there is not electricity, but I mean you're digging up the whole city to get more charging points. So this kind of concept of bringing electricity to the car is not a bad concept. And also, you know a lot of people don't have a parking spot and you have, like, the walkway between their house and the car, so then you could charge the car on the side. So this freedom or access of electricity is a major enabler for this electrification.

Speaker 2:

I think most of the listeners Mats will not appreciate the amount of pollution that is being generated by these small scale excavators just within London. What advice would you give to people that are within the London area that as they walk past one of these excavators now they think I want to do something about this. What can they do?

Speaker 1:

So you should not walk past. So when you walk down the road and you start to see those excavators and they normally are very close to the walk path and they close up the walk path, I mean they're digging the road, they're digging utility lines and you should not get close to them because that air it's all local air quality and we are measuring the air quality generally in London in different places. That's local air quality and we are measuring the air quality generally in London in different places. That's local air quality. So I mean I recommend to go on the other side of the street and be a little bit away from those machines. And when you walk in London, or you walk in today, when you walk in London, you cannot smell a diesel car anymore. You cannot smell anything.

Speaker 1:

As soon as you get close to those machines you're smelling them. I mean you can see the soot coming out of the exhaust and those pollutants are not good and they stay because they're buildings. They're buildings so they stay and especially if the weather gets cold it's almost like a blanket I put over London and emission stays very local and especially if there's no wind. So I recommend not to walk close by diesel machines. That's standing in London. I cannot think about anything that is more polluting in London right now. I don't think that anything is more than those small machines. So if there's a big machine, I don't think there is going to be a major problem. They emit much less.

Speaker 2:

The big machines emit less than what the small ones do. Oh yeah, by how much?

Speaker 1:

So if you look at the 75-ton excavator with the latest emission controls, there is not many of those in London. I mean if there is any in London, I mean they are extremely big. Compared to a 1.8 ton machine, then they emit approximately the same kind of harmful gases. And then one machine you probably pump 30 liters of fuel through that machine and in the small machine it's taking two liters per hour. So it's taking two liters per hour. So it's the systems, the emission control systems by legislation, by law, that you have to put on big machines that puts the harmful gases down. Compared to that, there is no emission control on the smaller machines, even if they are certified under stage five. So I mean, yeah, so it is. I mean we're doing a 95-ton excavator too. I mean in Europe. I mean I don't know if they've sold 10 of those. I mean so there's not many of those big machines.

Speaker 2:

So I'm also thinking for the operator as well, For those small excavators. That operator is just going to be getting sick quietly without knowing about it.

Speaker 1:

So the operator is more or less sitting on a diesel engine and that is vibrations all the time. So he has this vibration and they're all saying, when they have tried the electric digger, that there's no vibration. There's no vibration at all and that's fatigue. They get fatigued out of that. So the operator, that is.

Speaker 1:

The biggest advantage sitting inside a cab is that there is less vibration and then no noise. It's completely quiet, obviously, when they're digging, engaging into ground areas. But if you think about the exhaust pipe, I mean in one of those small machines, there are people around the machine all the time and they are sitting there. And even worse, when they dig a trench and then they swing over the trench and then the pipe of exhaust goes down the trench and you have a person down the trench for the cables that they're putting in and so on. So it's not healthy, it's not healthy. So there are a lot of people around the machine and in the machine that benefits from having an electric unit the machine and in the machine that that benefits from, from having an electric unit.

Speaker 2:

What's the one thing that you want our listeners to take away with them from this conversation that we've had? If there was just one message that you wanted them to appreciate, what would it be?

Speaker 1:

so my one, one message is that it seems I mean, I'm probably the same way and maybe I'm making this too complicated but we all think the big machines, the big things, it's the cool things. We need to solve that. And then we don't have a solution today, but we can do something in three years and it's like a way to, and we need to solve that too. It's super important because they are big emitters of CO2. I will say that the things that we have there are several manufacturers that have smaller machines that are electrified. They're available today. They make a direct impact on public health in cities. They make a direct impact on public health in cities.

Speaker 1:

So the one thing that is like we have done so much PowerPointing and planning and commitments and science-based targets. We're going to meet that and this, it's more about starting what is available. What is available, how does that fit what I'm doing and how can I get that to work, and I will promise that that will be a competitive, even if that will end up being a little bit more expensive today, because you have to learn it, you have to get the new skills, you have to start to transform yourself. That will be a competitive advantage in the future. We're not going to wake up tomorrow and say that this idea with low emissions, that was a bad idea. Let's get more diesel engines into the cities. It's going to go the opposite way. It's going to be. Everyone is going to focus on that. So be an early adopter. Start with the technologies available, get that into your process and take it from there.

Speaker 2:

It's been great speaking with you really has, and I have learned a load, especially about how polluting these small machines are. I never appreciated that before we had this conversation, but I just want to go back now to the analogy that you drew with Apple and how they just revolutionized and just make things easy when it came to communications. How is it that Volvo are trying to make owning or using electric excavators easier than what using their current people, using their current solution, which is these highly toxic and polluting diesel engines? How are they going to just make you know, I've got this electric one and it's just so much easier to use.

Speaker 1:

And so we started with electrical machines five years ago and engineering that's how we started. We started with like getting the technology right, getting it to it to perform exactly as a diesel machine or even better. So that was the starting point Then how we make this easier. So about three years ago we looked at the software industry of how they are. I mean, there is so much technology, disruptive technology that's coming in, and how do they make that work, like being easy, and so on and we came up with this, or we copied this that we call use cases.

Speaker 1:

A use case, so instead of being very average like average is fine and then we get very specific. So then we go together with partners in the whole value chain and do a use case and we go through this from the planning to its finish. So a little job. That is maybe four weeks in London and we've done those use cases in Korea, in America, in Sweden, in the UK. So we've done them in seven different things and we always thought in the beginning that we just do a use case in Sweden and then we know how the world works. But it wasn't that simple, you mean the world doesn't think like the Swedish.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was a revelation, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was like we tried to sell it in the UK and I was working with a very, very big British company and they said, yeah, that's not the way we operate. So we said, oh, we probably need to do it here too. And then what we do is that and this has worked fantastic. And just as this example, again with the latest one in London, was that Transport for London we get them, the people in, we get the contractor in that was there from Conway. We get the startup company, which was a charge ferry, like a smaller company. We get SMTGB, which is our dealer here in the UK, and ourselves, and we all get into the same room and say, now we're going to try to get zero emissions, zero emissions, we're not going to have any emissions. How do we do this? And then you start to learn all the problems that are coming up and we have to solve them. I mean, there has been so many problems and sometimes I thought and we came up with this slogan or, like, we borrowed this slogan we never surrender, we're just going to make this happen, but the main amount of data that we get from that, and then we can take that data back and we can act on that data and that could mean that we need to change the business models, that we have to have bigger batteries, smaller batteries, that we need to have other things to make this happen. We are collecting all this data, all those pain points that are happening, that is maybe sometimes out of our control, that we didn't even know about, and then we take that back and then we do the next one that hopefully comes into a more commercial environment.

Speaker 1:

So this thinking of a replacement product. So Nokia comes out with a new phone. It's the same phone, a little bit better battery quality or something. It's just a replacement. Apple comes out with a whole new mindset, a whole new technology and a whole new way of doing it, and that was based I don't know, but I mean, there was a vision, of course, but it was a use case how do you use it? And someone didn't get it that you didn't need to have something to type on. You can do that type on the screen, and it's the same way. We're taking this to market now and that is getting widespread. That is how we're working and it's a different way of working.

Speaker 1:

And one other thing is that maybe I'll go a little bit out, but I take that also from the Formula One. If you look at that data analysis, obviously you have people in there that knows what they're doing and so on, but they're bringing in the know-how to make the best out of it. So it's based around knowledge. It's based not like what you do in the company, it's like you need to win the race, so we need to have the best knowledge to be able to win the race.

Speaker 1:

And it's the same thing with the use cases is that Volvo is a massive company. We have some very, very clever men and women in that company and now we can pull those exact knowledge that we need because we know what the problem is. So we're pulling that out from the company to find a solution or to understand what we are seeing and so on. So I'm quite passionate about this, like going in use cases, get everyone in the value chain at the same table, start to work out what the problems are, never surrender and get to a working solution, and then I love that, matt's.

Speaker 2:

I can see the passion in you, I can see that the passion that you have is really well placed in the organization that you're in and the difference that you're trying to make.

Speaker 2:

Um, I love that concept of never surrender, um, because the only way to improve is to keep failing and keep adjusting and keep going, and the only way that you really do fail is by giving up.

Speaker 2:

And I think that there's a number of people, at least that I speak to, that are really passionate about making a difference in the world, not just to the construction industry, but just to the world in general, and they just feel as though they're just well, there's no point, I just need to give up and it's like well, really, this sustainability journey that the world has been on I know that Sweden has been on it for a lot longer, but that the world has been on collectively is really quite new, especially when you compare that to the industrial revolution and we all benefit from the industrial revolution.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned about the fuel uh, reach out, sorry, the fuel charging points and all of the different petrol stations, and how we have got the infrastructure to deliver gas and how we've got the infrastructure to deliver electricity into homes and offices. All of this has been built up over many, many, many, many years and we're not there yet with the sustainability elements. We're not there yet with a charge to your battery at your door. But that doesn't mean to say that we need to give up and we need to throw this hole in.

Speaker 1:

No, and the exciting thing is that I mean we have never, as I said, we've done this in Korea, we've done it in Scandinavia, in North America and here in the UK and we have never knocked on a door and they said that's not what we want to do. I mean, and even if they said like, maybe that's not exactly my expertise, but this person will do it. So there is a lot of drive in the industry, there is a lot of willingness to do that. Of course, in the end of the day, it needs to be commercial, viable, it needs to make the money, but the drive and the knowledge and the passion that is in the industry is tremendous. And also, I mean, in one way, you could look at this as more than that.

Speaker 1:

We are a diesel engine manufacturer, so we should be quite anti this. I mean, it's going against what we're actually doing, but it's completely opposite, completely opposite. The passion that we have with Involvo in this area is amazing. It's absolutely amazing and the amount of people that is going the extra mile to solve those things. It's yeah, and that is also kind of powering your passion for it when you have so many people in the background supporting and making this happen. And I think the first two machines that we did, the first two machines that we did, we developed them on record time. Record time, super quality, super performance, and that just shows the outcome that we can do and that we are doing.

Speaker 2:

Really enjoyed having you as a guest on the Thriving Construction Podcast today. Matt's really grateful for your passion and for the journey that you are on personally, as well as the journey that you're on with Volvo. Thank you, thank you, thanks, matt. Thanks for watching to the end. I think that you'll like this, but before you do that, just make sure that you've commented and liked below and also that you subscribed.