Electrifying Freight & Fleets: How Einride Is Re-Architecting The Industry

Charging infrastructure is expensive. Fleets can't pause while the technology matures. And every kilowatt-hour has to compete with diesel on a dollars-per-mile basis. So how do you actually electrify heavy-duty freight without bolting on a green premium?

On this episode of Field Frequency, Jason is joined by Sean Ackley, VP of Energy & Infrastructure, and Josie-Dee Li, Product Director of Energy & Infrastructure at Einride — a freight tech company tying together electric trucks, autonomous vehicles, energy infrastructure, and a digital ecosystem called Saga.

In this conversation:

• Sean and Josie-Dee's paths through e-mobility, utilities, smart home, and EV charging
• The origin and operational role of Einride's cabless autonomous eBot
• Why an autonomous future has to be an electric future
• The four cost pillars of delivering electric fuel — land, hardware, O&M, and go-to-market — and how each one impacts TCO
• How Saga blends route planning, charging reservations, state-of-charge tracking, and dynamic routing into one pane of glass
• Three charging models: private depots, third-party hubs, and Einride-managed sites with co-located solar and storage
• Energy arbitrage, wholesale capacity offtake, and monetizing electrons back to the grid
• Real proof that mixed electric/diesel fleets can hit — and even beat — diesel TCO parity
• What MCS charging, bigger batteries, and on-the-go fueling unlock for the next wave of adoption

Whether you run a fleet, build charging infrastructure, or work anywhere in freight tech, this is a grounded look at the economics, execution, and digital tooling behind heavy-duty electrification today.

Connect

Learn more about Einride: einride.tech Find Sean Ackley and Josie-Dee Li on LinkedIn

Field Frequency is powered by Field Advantage — an IT field services company specializing in deployment, maintenance, and operation of critical infrastructure, including EV charging networks. Learn more at fieldadvantage.com.

Produced and edited by Autozy — autozy.co

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Freight electrification is complex. You're dealing with infrastructure constraints, operational risk, charging economics, and fleets that don't have the option to pause while technology matures. On this episode of Field Frequency, I'm joined by Sean Ackley and Josie D. Lee from Nride to talk through how they're approaching that reality. NRIDE has an electric fleet, autonomous vehicles, energy infrastructure, and a digital ecosystem that ties it all together. This conversation isn't about vision statements. It's about Nride's freight economics, execution discipline, and what happens when electrification navigates real routes for real customers with real balance sheets. Let's get into it. Today I'm very happy to have two leaders from InRide with me today. Sean Ackley, VP of Energy and Infrastructure, and Josie D. Lee, Product Director of Energy and Infrastructure. Hey guys, so glad to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Hey, nice to nice to be here, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Yeah, this is uh this is gonna be a pivot for field frequency to have two guests. So you're the you're you're the first feature uh where we have two guests, and I'm glad because we've got uh we've got different conversations tracks, and so I think it's gonna be cool to be able to approach those uh talking tracks from different points of perspective. Uh so that's cool. That's uh fro field frequency first. Um would want to kick off this conversation, obviously, first with your personal story, your origin story. What what was the professional journey that led you to the seats that you were in? Obviously, we want to get into Inride's mission and execution, but I want to find out about your story first. So the role that you're in today and and kind of how you your ic industry experience has shaped where you're at today and what you're doing at the company. And so I'll leave it up to you who wants to go first on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Normally I would I would tip my hat, but let me let me set it up because then uh I think Josie D's story uh and how she joined would be interesting as well. But uh Sean Ackley, long time in e-mobility, uh say a better part of uh eight, maybe going on 50 years, what feels like uh in e-mobility. But I've long time background, power infrastructure, uh worked for very large power industrials in in the earlier parts of my career. Started in working in data centers and UPS systems, working for Eaton, worked my way through uh project management and overseeing construction activities in low voltage, media voltage for Siemens. I've got a chance to to work in their e-mobility division as it was standing up in the earlier days, where they were building EVSE hardware equipment as well as sort of a digital management ecosystem, things like asset management, uh network operations center, customer service, the deployment, the physical construction and and installation of these assets. Most of that work serving fleets was where I started was e-bus fleets serving transits and some of the metro operations for rapid bus, as well as you know, local transit operations that were going to be electrified. So uh nice to come full circle. But in the meantime, transitioning through working for another large power industrial uh that was acquiring uh a bit of a sort of a distribution power equipment manufacturing business, uh now known as Hitachi Energy, supporting them as well as the Hitachi Corporate mission, trying to figure out uh where does Hitachi play in the world of e-mobility in North America? Gave me some great exposure to where where is corporate venturing spending its money and investing in some of these technologies, where is the where are large companies investing in their product portfolio and roadmaps? Who do they think will be big buyers of this equipment and what are their vested interests in electrification of things that move? And in those those worlds, I started to get exposed to light duty vehicles. Spent some time at a light duty OEM. I don't know if all of your listeners may have heard of a company called Vinfast out of Vietnam, but that was uh certainly an exciting, I'd say it was one of the most interesting jobs that I've had working there. It was exciting to work at a at an OEM and see a new OEM come to market, not without troubles, but uh certainly exciting in the charging space as well. We built some very cool things while I was there, very proud of that work and the team we got to work with there. But I had been exposed to Enrod all along those journeys, getting to know their their origin story in autonomy, their growing ambitions and moving heavy-duty freight for shippers electrified. Uh so it was always neat to see their growth story and then had an amazing opportunity to join the team. Uh, and I've been here for two years leading the the U.S. Energy and Infrastructures Business Unit, where we we do something that's um a bit of magic and a a bit of strategic uh spend of money. It is building fueling to enable heavy-duty electric uh electric freight and doing so in a way that doesn't make the entire TCO model just completely miss the mark pursuing diesel parity. Any of anyone that you've spoken with or anyone that you know that's in this ecosystem, charging infrastructure is expensive. It is intensive, it is usually the bottleneck in figuring out how to transition a fleet. So it was an exciting opportunity to come join the team. Like I said, I've been here two years and it's a mission-driven company, and there's not a person that has joined this this company that isn't also personally vested in electrification. So it's a very exciting and passionate work group. So yeah, it's been a wonderful time here. And then luckily, turn it over to you, Josie, but luckily have had uh an addition to the team as of recent uh in Josie D.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, uh I've been at NRIDE for six months now, and it's been an amazing learning journey so far. Before Nride, and really starting at the beginning, I started my career in management consulting, specifically in the utilities industry, working on data management, demand response programs, um, really opened my eyes to the criticality of this infrastructure that is kind of hidden in our everyday lives and we take for granted. And compared to maybe my peers who were traveling, traveling all over working for CPG companies, I was working on this very underserved, unsexy, operationally complex industry, but really kind of started my interest in electrification. I was at Accenture at the time and did a brief stint in corporate strategy for their emerging AI group, but pivoted to product management to really get my hands dirty and build products. I worked on enterprise applications ingesting physical sensor data to drive insights and action by fleet managers or users of connected home platforms. On that topic, I went on to lead the smart home product team at iRobot, which is the Roomba robot vacuum and mop uh cleaning company, really working on connecting robots with other devices and home ecosystems like Amazon, Google, Apple for hands-free cleaning and automations. I still had this itch to work in climate and wanted to get back to the energy space and really uh at the intersection of energy and mobility. So always been interested in how goods and people move around the world and the climate impact of transportation and the percentage of emissions that comes from transportation was a particularly compelling. Before I joined EnRite to tackle the 10% of emissions that come from road freight, I got into the EV charging world at AMP Up, which is a mostly light duty vehicle focused level two, but expanding into fast charging as well, a charging management software platform. Um led zero-to-one product launches for installer tools, revamped mobile driver app, although I don't think there should be so many EV charging apps out there. And then helped uh push AMP up into the fleet segment, specifically for on-route payments and take-home reimbursement solutions. Uh while we weren't serving only fleet, I was particularly interested in that fleet segment and really how do you charge vehicles with the complexities of other depot operations, energy and load management controls, prioritizing certain vehicles to get back out on the road, and really focusing on that TCO business case to electrify in the first place. After AMP Up, I did some product consulting for e-mobility startups and kind of in parallel living in San Francisco, seeing and riding all these robotaxis around the city, I really got interested in and maybe obsessed with autonomy and really started to narrow my career focus to the intersection of EV, AV, electric and autonomous vehicles, and specifically in more of the behind-the-scenes fleet depot operations with an energy management, energy optimization focus. So here comes NRID. NRIDE is exactly in that intersection. Friend put me in touch with Sean actually and said, Hey, you want to do EV, AV? Have you thought about working in trucks? Um the freight space is new to me, but learning so much every day. Um, and I think that charging electric and autonomous trucks is probably the most interesting thing I I could do. Um, and especially with that planet lens of reducing global emissions and also the market opportunity. It's a$1 trillion market opportunity in the US when we're tackling that and those 10% of global emissions through decarbonizing freight with digital solutions, electric, and autonomous.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yeah. And for those who maybe don't work in truck, I mean being sold up, hey, you want to go work in truck. Like maybe you probably don't go, yeah, I've always wanted to work in truck. What does work in truck mean? So we're certainly excited that all of the things that EnRID is doing here was uh uh an attractive uh proposition to join the organization. I'm glad to have Jesse D. But yeah, I'm fully all of the those things end to end are really what sort of differentiate what NRED does here, uh, that it covers such a wide lens of the electrification industry. And it is truck. It is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah. I well, thank you for sharing both of both of you sharing your backgrounds. It's important, you know, as subject matter experts on on field frequency, we I think it always makes sense to to hear the background and what led through that personal journey to where you're at and you know the motivations and and inspirations behind it. So I always I always like to call out for that. Um you had mentioned um 10% of global emissions is attached to freight. Is that the number that you made mention of? Is that did I get that stat right? That's a big number. And so Enride's mission overall is like you said, it's about that market and sustainability. Freight represents a massive slice of of global emissions and operational costs. So, Sean, I'd like to to pitch it over to you to walk us through how Nride's mission and its approach to sustainable freight addresses the the climate aspect, uh the economic realities attached to it. Walk us through that.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Sure. Yeah, I mean we would definitely classify ourselves as a freight tech company, first and foremost. But that the origin story of NRIDE would be in autonomy. If anyone is now Googling quickly, like what is an NRID, well, the first thing you might see might be our our ebot, this our autonomous and cabless uh IP that was developed to move heavy freight A to B. Then uh, you know, as the company continues to grow and and has matured in each of the global markets that we participate in, there was a very obvious opportunity, but a gap that we thought we would close ourselves, and that was there's still a need to have the the human driver delivering freight over the road, and that we could continue to to champion the electrification and decarbonization of freight with that additional modality. But we then acquired class eight rolling stock assets, own them, operate them. So that is uh another part of our business that has grown very well, uh, leaps and bounds over the last few years. And then the the the third part of the business that Josie D and I uh spend our times in is that electrification or the the fueling, e-fueling, we'll call it, uh, part of the business. So it's uh it starts as an enabler to serve those other two divisions, uh the autonomy and the driven fleet uh divisions. But in and of itself, as our business continues to mature, we start to look outward of what else are we doing with this precious commodity that is energy. So it is serving our fleets, working to reduce costs. It is also looking up to other fleets that maybe don't have the same buying power, maybe don't have the same volume of truck that they buy, but are still trying to achieve those TCO parity formulas to make that business decision pencil. Um and energy is an important uh component of that. I would say roughly 15 cents on the dollar spent to deliver goods A to B in an electrified future is have everything to do with how you fuel the truck with electrons. So the the equipment procurement, the long-term maintenance, the serviceability, the land, if it's uh an own operator model, all of those things have to be amortized into delivering freight A to B. So our, I would say, you know, remaining a freight tech company, we've realized that to do all of those things, to bring all of those business ambitions together, the glue that brings it all together is our digital tech stack. And so we have a a pretty strong portfolio of solutions that help manage picking the right lanes for shippers that could be electrified with the technologies we have today, deliver those goods A to B under the state of charge or the range of the truck that could achieve that diesel parity. And then where should we do fueling? Should it be behind behind the fence on customer premise? Should it be off-site? How do we amortize some of the operative costs of owning a truck and running it? That is dynamic routing, that is TMS integrations. These are all the things that a freight logistics company needs to have, and we have to integrate with all of it and then do something different than has been done before because the technology is a little different. And so it's sort of round out the mission here. It is to, as I said, be a freight tech company, but it is also to really be honest about pursuits in decarbonizing freight. We're mission-backed, we're we're passionate about this, but also delivering against the goals that are so important to our shipper clients, and that is achieving diesel parity. So it is not just a green premium every time to make this decision. It is it is also a business decision to electrify uh the way you move goods. And so we we uh have found great success in doing that. We've got a great series of shipper clients that we continue to serve that see this vision with us and see us succeed at our mission and help us continue to grow. And we're we're adding more every day. It's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

You know, you mentioned, you know, the folks may be Googling Inride and and may get a glimpse of the Ebot. Obviously, that there's got to be a visceral reaction to to the EBOT and and maybe even a reaction to because, like you said, all all the components of electrification in fleet is one thing, and freight and all the components that kind of support that. Not only through electrification and autonomy, but other aspects. And the ebot, and it's an autonomous feature, is an example of that. Is there a visceral reaction to the innovation that's adding a layer of complexity to prospective freak freight customers that look at that? Or maybe you want to define that that definition of of innovation and how it's how it's used to speak to your your customers and your prospective customers.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Well, Josie, I have to, you know where I'm gonna point towards because we had a fun event where we brought a bot out from a marketing exposure standpoint. There was a nice trade show. We got to bring it out and and let folks see it, touch it, experience it, and and you mentioned it's a visceral, that's an emotional reaction. Josie, like gotta take them through kind of the reactions you were getting from folks because it was a fun activity. Like, what does this make you feel?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, people kept coming up to me asking me, what is this? And it's well, it was the only truck on the floor, so it was much larger than anything else that anybody at the that the conference brought. Maybe that drove part of the reaction, but it was everything from cool. I got cool a lot. Cute. People think it was cute. I'm in that camp. Other people thought it was maybe more sinister or um mysterious and all the adjectives in between that that spectrum. But I think people thought people think it's different, and it does look different than all the other trucks out there. The autonomous ones are mostly retrofitted. None of the autonomous trucks out there outside of En-Reds are electric yet, although I hope that changes. People found that aspect interesting. I think the the weirdest part for people is that it doesn't have a place where a human sit. There's no cab. So people kept saying, Can I can I open it? Can I see what's underneath? And it's like, there's there's nothing really to see there.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Um well, there's a lot to see, but not a lot we could share, probably.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah, but uh, but I would say they're probably wanting to somehow get inside of it, and there's not a way to do that. It's not designed for that. It's not there's not a cab for for a driver, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, it's interesting because it it per you know, you you personify the things, you try to sort of put yourself in it, have a moment of empathy. Like, what is this thing gonna do for me? What is it doing in industry? I I don't have a person that's behind the wheel to talk to sort of see how I engage and how how it lives around me. But I think uh quintessentially it does invoke sort of an emotional response. But when we show what it does, it really from a business standpoint starts to show what it can do operationally, what it can do to alleviate the constraints around when you operate, how long you can operate, where it fits into the the hybrid ecosystem it will live in that will still have driven fleets operating around an autonomous asset and moving in strides together. So I think it was interesting, certainly to get the the human feedback of what is it, what does it invoke emotionally? But when you really start to show like what it can demonstrate, we had a a sort of a we'll call it a demo that shows it in operations at one of our shipper clients' sites and and what it's doing. Uh then they start to go, oh, I see why you've gone this route. I see why you've taken the position you have that it had to be electric, and fully believing that an uh an autonomous future is an electric future is definitely a mantra internally here. It's very easy to see why once you see it moving and doing what it does.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Yeah. Well, I know there's always a lot of buzz. I've been in plenty of industry events where I've seen uh the e bot, you know, may have remarked to you in the past, I've never really been within five to ten feet of it because there's always such a buzz around the booth when when the ebot is there present, there's lots of activity and people crowding around. And I've just never made the intention to even get up close to it and walk around it. But it's it is cool looking units. And um yeah, I'm sure it does draw people in. But um, you know, I'm I'm curious about the recharging of it. I don't know, I don't want to reveal any secret sauce, but is is that is that wireless or is there a plug-in recharge component to it? And if you can't say totally fine.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

No, no, no, it's totally fine. It's plug-in, plugin. And we're constantly taking a look at um as technologies in both dynamic and uh static uh wireless charging evolve, but we also have to keep in mind that as a you know, this is the one area where we have some internal IP, right? We have to make sure that this thing is able to operate where we have permit to operate. So constantly changing and iterating is you know, making sure we're compliant with NITSA, submitting the the current construction and bomb configuration of an asset can't be something that's constantly flipping, right? So we've got to figure out the right time in roadmaps to evaluate from a charging perspective where we cut in new technology. So right now, what we have is a plugin that's working just fine for us, and it gets us uh the it has us uh be able to leverage existing infrastructure we deploy for the driven fleet too. Uh it doesn't seem to have to have some special use case for one versus the other that can live in the same uh charging ecosystem together.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, Joe C D.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

You also have to think about where it's charging and where it's spending most of its time. When it's not on the road, it's at the loading dock and thinking about adding a d a charging setup like a robotic arm or something that's interfering with goods being loaded and unloaded. So there's some space constraints, and we want to be able to charge it uh as in an optimized way as possible while other activities are taking place.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Yeah. You know, like like you said, Sean, there's so much that goes into the build of materials, all the way from that to where it's permitted to move around. And I don't think the public has really thought about all that goes into what it means to deploy an autonomous vehicle. I know I live in San Antonio, Texas. Uh Waymo operates in the market just north of me in Austin, but clearly they're they're working towards operating here in in uh our in San Antonio because I'm seeing the cars both with a passenger and without a passenger, and they're just driving the same routes. It's like I can almost predict when I'm gonna bump into a Waymo unit uh because I see it, it's running the same route and it's you know it's mapping out where it can go in aligned with what where it's permitted to go. But thanks for that uh insight on the eBot. You know, kind of moving beyond that into just you mentioned digitization and and the platform that that NRID has, Sean. Looking at that electrification through through through the ecosystem, there is a whole suite of solutions that NRIde is bringing. It goes beyond the e bot. There's charging. When you're talking to your freight customers, there's there's charging to consider. There's software, you remoted route optimization, I think maybe as you were talking through some of that. How with all of these parts and pieces, the freight, the operator, when you come to them with the solution, how do you walk through all of those value ads and have a conversation about each of those different unique needs they have?

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Sure. And I'll try and keep it high level because I think the tactical response that Judy D could uh expand on would be where most folks are really interested. But uh from a high level, I think you you touched on a point, this is this is a lot of things, right? One of the the ethoses I have or or convictions I have is to not create this complex a la carte menu that you're constantly having to say to a client, like, you need one of these, ten of that, six of these, and then make sure you staff this and you hire that, and your person who is doing facilities now has to think about this asset. No, we really uh kind of want to deliver this as a buy from Enride the way you buy shipping services currently. And as you're ready to mature and grow into wanting to take some ownership, there are great tools we're assembling to be able to deliver that for you. So to turn some control, to turn some to turn over some not just control, but auditability and accountability to make sure that you have the entitlement. From us to make sure we deliver things like service readiness, ready to roll truck, in-time delivery, and it has everything to do with fuel, but you're not bound by having to figure out how to build this ecosystem yourself. We have all the tools necessary. The other thing that I'm I'm really cognizant of with all the tools that are out there, we could be completely vertically integrated as a shipper partner. And then there are some areas that really make sense instead to build it ourselves to partner up well. And so there's a lot of great makers of some of these ecosystem components. And we have a responsibility in the North America market, so I can talk more closely with that. But globally, we we constantly take a look at how much of this do we need to develop ourselves, build ourselves, or how much of this do we lean on partnerships where they have a best of three product that uh we can help close a gap in our product portfolio. And then beyond that, at top level, all of this has to make dollars and cents. So when we start to think about the business of just fuel delivery, if we were a pure pure play CPO, like we were building charging stations and we were a retailer of energy, the more stuff you stack on and tack on that that you think about reduces your cost to operate, still gets baked into what you offer in a price out to the market. And again, as a pure play CPO, you would say, well, that all gets baked into the rack rate or your kilowatt hour rate. So if there's too much stuff that doesn't generate value, and it does maybe do some great things in optimizing your operations and reducing your cost overhead because you're efficient with having really smart tools and generating great data points, but it doesn't create value. It's a tough thing to say we can build all of this stuff and grab everything, one of everything, and be able to offer that. So we have to be pretty uh tailored in what we build as a charging fueling provider, both to our fleets and then as Josie D maybe expands on like where we might look to be a service provider externally to Enride, not just a consumer of our own electric fuels. So yeah, I mean the the the digital ecosystem can include things like CMS and we can talk about the outward-facing protocols that talk to cloud systems, but we want to make sure that we have it right size for our deployment and then not overburdening the ability to deliver freight A to B at diesel parity because we've got too much stuff.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Yeah. Um, and not only that, it's it's got to be uh uh well, maybe I'm looking at this short-sightedly, but I just know um, you know, the first 15 years of my career was spent in fleet operations. Um and it kind of culminated with me as a fleet manager and leading a couple uh, you know, pretty big operations and multiple fueling sites, a large fleet. And I I remember around two thousand two thousand three, four or five something, around that time, maybe a little before that. The shift from diesel to to CNG was big in in the space that I was operating in as a fleet. And we started looking at C and G. And it was just the conversion aspect from diesel or gas-powered vehicles to CNG, and then the infrastructure alone, that was a lot to take in because it was a reformatting of our entire kind of operation and ecosystem. And so when we realized different type of fuel, different type of software, different type of preventive maintenance schedule on the fleet, all these little aspects that that were were direct and indirect costs and operational burdens, um, it it got somewhere good. But as an operator, I was like kind of trying not to get overwhelmed because I was trying to keep things also moving, you know, keep the day-to-day going. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

If you got an ESG mandate from the powers that be uh up top, you're gonna f solve problems, and there are great tools to go solve some problems. But if the the mission was purely like, we look we have an ESG target, we want to reduce emissions, but also we don't want to pay a premium to move to good B. So then you kind of say to yourself, well, how how lean can I be, but still deliver against that goal? And when we think about fueling and building chargers, uh there are there, I usually say there's roughly four main categories of what goes into the cost surrounding delivering fuel, and that is the land, whether you have an easement or long-term lease or you have to acquire a parcel. There's the charging hardware and all the make ready the physical assets, the site improvements you do to build the infrastructure. There's the long-term operation and maintenance and serviceability. And then there is like this category that includes things like uh your go to market, your your it's I hesitate, like we don't we're not this isn't describing a SaaS play, but it is like how do I then deliver fuel in a way that the market's ready to receive it? And all of those four categories can be capitally intensive depending on how much of that you say I've got to buy and own and operate, or do I invite in a partner? And then when you add all that up and you sort of amortize it around baking all those costs into delivering the kilowatt hour, the thing that we really hold on to is, but it can't exceed what we would say is a TCO parity for the fuel component. We look at TCO parity, of course, all in. So when a shipper says, I'm gonna go out and uh bid out an opportunity for a lane where we want to participate in that bid, I want to uh dollars per mile or dollars per load, or you know, that's the typical the unit economics around how they make decisions on picking uh a third-party shipper to deliver goods A to B. And fuel is probably buried in there somewhere in that model. But for us, so then my internal client being Enrique, I've got to figure out how to make sure that the cost associated traditionally with diesel fuel to deliver that lane, being diesel being our competitor, the kilowatt hours have to be delivered on diesel parity. I don't get to hide and obfuscate over overspend and all this excess capital we have to spend to build infrastructure. I don't get to hide it in the truck because guess what? The truck also has to figure out how to sort of amortize its costs of operating a truck that is has been at least historically more expensive and has to run longer more often to be able to be on diesel parity. So we're all internally sort of figuring out our pieces on TCO parity. Again, those four components that go into being able to deliver fuel, we have to figure out how a way to uh to mash them together and be just right size to deliver against that diesel parity.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

So to that end, I guess I can ask you, fleets can realistically achieve TCO parity in in your solution alongside diesel? That that is possible?

SPEAKER_01 28:01

We we've proven uh that to be true. And this and this is goes beyond the marketing jargon I might uh narrate here. Please go out. There's uh a nice report that we published on our website where we reference um an optimization where even more interesting, a fleet not just of electric trucks delivering goods A to B. It was mixed in with diesel trucks, even more efficient than just running a pure electric play. Uh was an interesting uh uh report that we've we've published. I encourage the team to go out to the website or anyone listening that's interested, go go read that report. What's the name of that report? Oh gosh, uh I could go and Google it for you and make sure that you have a link that you can put into the umorries website for sure. Uh I will happily share that to you. I just don't have the top of my head. Got it. Go to our press room. I think it's in one of our press rooms. But but to that extent, then uh what's interesting, and I think Lozid, it'd be nice if you could sort of explain like how do we do that? And maybe we'll stick to our we'll stick to our lane here. Uh we'll stick to the charging side of that equation. But the how we do that is pretty interesting. Well, that sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

How how how we get to e-fuel parity with diesel and really selling energy the way that people buy diesel and not adding layers of complexity like time of use rates or additional complexity and costs around charging. One is we use our digital platform. It's called Saga. It integrates both route and transportation planning optimization with charging, both from a charging scheduling perspective. We call it reservations, as well as from a kind of estimated time of arrival, departure with SOC, uh and charging speed, all factored into that. And so that's that's definitely one way that we optimize kind of with with that software layer and don't view charging as separate. And then we also look at how do we bundle charging with other operational activities, like if we're domiciling overnight, charging overnight, um and other other methods. I think on the really on the energy side, there's there's a few different ways that we think about charging and different use cases and scenarios. Our approach in Europe is a little bit different than the US. So I think Sean explained a couple of the different scenarios, like private depot, behind the fence for customers. That's similar in both Europe and the US. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means from a charging management perspective. We work with a network of third-party charging partners that are really purpose building medium, heavy-duty depots. I can explain more about how we access that and digitally integrate. In Europe, though, we we do have a network of N-RID-hosted smart charging stations, which are open to uh truck fleets that we work with, uh, our customers, uh, kind of in the meantime, the general public as well, to increase utilization, observation, the making sure you have a spot at that charging station, whether it's N-RIDs or somebody else's, making sure that lane is uh the right size, has uh a cable that's long enough to fit in the port, whether it's on the driver, the passenger side, many different considerations. And the way that trucks charge needs to be needs to consider all of those different parameters that's that's different and more nuanced than than just a passenger vehicle.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

So go ahead. No, go ahead, Sean. Go ahead. No, no, no. Just bring it on. Like, so we talked about uh, you know, there's there's this digital control uh capability that that helps us blend whether we're leveraging charging that we own and operate off site, that's sort of an N-ride smart charging hub or smart charger, something that we might install behind the fence for a shipper client on their premise. We can sort of blend that in a a charging ecosystem that says if a truck needs to charge at one side, it can do that here, and we can then dynamically route it over here. Where we can do things like finding the best rate, where's the cheapest energy? And then we can also do some pretty interesting things with third-party developers where they're developing parcels, they need to continue to see utilization climb. We can, as here in the US, negotiate that we will buy sort of a wholesale capacity at these sites rather than more of a tenancy model. We'll basically say we're we need fuel and we need it in this region. We have this many trucks that are operating for shippers in this area. And we'd like to give you something that is long-term and forecastable in the form of a contract of offtake, and then that then folds into this ecosystem. So now we have this network of capacity offtake at third-party sites, the stuff that we build and own and operate, and the stuff that we build for partners behind the fence, and we can aggregate all these things and sort of blend them together to blend the rate and make it stable and predictable for clients who need that. We can play arbitrage and fight time of use rate structures and the variability and volatility and stability industry if some customer needs that. Um, but we can also play that arbitrage for ourselves and sort of move the pieces around uh to do the puts and takes on where we can make um the profit we need on a resale of an electron uh off the charger. And then the next thing that is really interesting, I think is probably the most novel thing that we're pursuing here in the US region, uh, and we're certainly exploring variants of this globally, but energy in and of itself as the commodity here. When we deploy something like on-site storage or on-site generation of power in certain markets, meaning the US is not this homogeneous electrical utility grid, right? There's different markets, different RTOs, and now with a nascent sort of aggregator and DSO market model opening up at distribution. If we deploy these these assets in certain markets, we can start to monetize the utilization we don't need retail. The electrons we don't need to draw off the grid. And if we have stored some at an advantage rate or we generated some leaner than we might have bought off the grid, we can then offer it back to the market. That in this market, in the current times that we're seeing where things like subsidy and rebate are tricky to find in all markets, that in and of itself is a business revenue injection that subsidizes other parts of our business, allowing us again to achieve that TCO parity of fuels. So that we're able to do that and go out to the market and say, charge with us, charge with our partners. We are the company partner that will help you achieve your TCO parity goals in e-fuels. And as you electrify it, there's things inside the portfolio we offer in running freight for you, owning and operating the assets, letting you run the assets. They they live on our balance sheet. All of those tools are further unlocks that we get to offer in those conversations.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

That's a full suite of solutions and a lot there to uh kind of flesh out, Joe C D, when you were talking about the features of Saga, to kind of flesh that as an example, an operator maybe has constraints at their local facility in terms of charging infrastructure. So maybe they built out X amount of chargers. But for whatever reason, the route profile of a vehicle, it could possibly go beyond its range and not be dependent on its local depot there because Saga will will pull in maybe those third-party charging hubs and and will optimize the route. So taking it probably outside of its comfort zone versus having to depend on local charging. And so that's what I was hearing. And did did I hear that correctly from from charging use cases within within your within your solutions?

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Absolutely. Just because a customer has charging at their depot, behind the fence, at their warehouse next to it, doesn't mean that that's the only place that truck charges. As trucks, batteries get bigger, ranges get longer, increasingly we'll see more on-the-go charging. Charging won't be limited to a single shift on one charge that has to go back to the point of origin to uh to charge again. So that this is why we're building this network of and access to a larger network at a blended, stable e-fuel rate so that we can allow these this multiple use case of the truck maybe just um charges as much as it can at the warehouse and then tops up at a nearby, gets automatically routed to a charging waypoint. Um, kind of the rate of the complexity of charging is is not an issue. That system can automatically route the truck to a nearby charging site that has an available lane. We have dynamic reservations that can assign that truck to that specific charging lane, communicate to the driver where to go, um, and make make changes too if the if the schedule for the day changes and the truck has to drive a little bit farther that day. And there's there's many ways to enable kind of this network of of third-party chargers, um, and what Sean mentioned about kind of brokering capacity, buying large volumes of energy that then we can consume um with our own fleet or or uh deploy with our customers or any other fleets.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Yeah, that's that's fantastic. Just so I make sure I didn't miss any part of that in in terms of the overall charging use cases and solutions. You've got obviously the the local private depot and the third-party charging hubs. What was it, was there, was there a third pillar in that?

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Yeah, this is more on the the energy side where we'll have NRIDED managed and co-developed sites with EV chargers co-located with those solar and battery assets, which is both kind of balancing our participation in these wholesale energy markets when those electrons aren't being used with with our fleet charging needs and making sure we're not impacting any freight operations, allowing us to do both kind of revenue generation as well as making sure our trucks are and any truck that comes to charge it gets back on the road with the with the power it needs and not impacting their shift. We're we're still kind of early in this process in the site selection phase in the Baltimore area and working with capital financing partners and plan to bring this to life in the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

That's that's great. That that's fantastic. I know that there's been efforts for for charging hubs for ride shares and public access and fleet applications and stuff, but that's a lot of work to try to bring all that into a single, you know, ecosystem where everybody understands who's doing what, who has access when. And so you're taking that work out for your customers for that to make it make it easier, it sounds like. Yeah. Sounds like Saga has uh a lot of compelling features to it as a platform. That's really cool. Any any other comments on the on maybe the the execution aspect?

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yeah, one um one important piece is having a single pane of glass to see what chargers are available. It shouldn't matter who owns and operates that site, but having a single way to see or be dynamically routed to a location, and then also have visibility to real-time charging status, state of charge, charging speed to ensure that you can get back on the road at the time you need to, having all that charging history, any sort of fleet invoicing billing in one place. So this is this is really a central location to see real-time status, uh, have assurance that you, your reservation that's upcoming allows you to charge at that location, dynamic routing, rescheduling as needed, and then that historical view as well that's visible to the fleet, the CPO, uh, the operator, owner of the of the charging site, and and NRID.

SPEAKER_02 39:21

It's been a great conversation thus far. It's amazing how how quick it goes. I always like to uh to try to round the corner of the show with a forward-looking conversation just to kind of look forecasting, looking at things, you know, through the colour. Crystal ball. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it worked, right? 100% okay, good. Uh now it works every time, something like that, right? You know, this this industry electrification, um, and really the the freight industry is is an example of something that's that's slow to change, slow to innovation, slow to adopt. It's kind of been a machine that's been moving forward. And I imagine companies like InRide are a disruptor and an innovator. So what what uh within that vein of thought, you know, as as you're trying to shift the freight industry into looking at things and doing things different, what do you see as maybe the biggest levers that accelerate uh the shift to to e-fuels and autonomous freight at scale?

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Yeah, I think for us, I I mentioned it earlier, but to get anyone in your corner today in our observations of the state of the industry domestically here in the US, let alone with with things like federal policy and anyone who might say there's headwinds in electrification and transition of fleets, the easiest way to sort of shut down any concerns around business viability is to continue to offer in a way that the current industry wants to consume. So repression examples would be in the way that they want to bid out and the way they want to pay for freight movement shouldn't have to be different just because it's electrified. And so we'll start there in this time, trying to make sure that what we offer is consumable in that way, as best we can make it not their problem to solve. And then as we look into the maybe the crystal ball and look outward, that I I truly do think that the big shippers of the world that are global are having to face these issues because of global mandates, regardless of what might be happening in individual regions. So they they do sort of say, well, if I'm doing it here, I will kind of continue to do it elsewhere so I get scales of the efficiency. I'm gonna continue to drive that. And that uh would be true in any market, uh, including the US here. We're gonna see that that growth. Then other shippers that look to those larger shippers, well, what are you doing and why? If we can continue to show when we've worked with some of these shippers here, we were able to achieve that TCO parity. Here's the tools we had at our disposal. You have access to the same tools working with Enri to make those same choices for yourself, deliver against those goals, build that trust and scale our business around, leading with the shippers that have seen the proof in what we deliver. Then on top of that, as the industry starts to evolve and see a transition towards electrification, um, you will find that the shippers at every level start to think to themselves, well, I should know more. I should learn more. I should make sure that I have charging experts on my staff, that my facilities teams and the operators of warehouses and DCs and all these distribution nodes should understand that electrical upfit, when does that occur in my schedule and when can I best leverage that to make sure I have ample capacity for charging and I'm not digging in the ground later again at twice the cost? They're gonna start thinking about these things ahead of time because they've seen successes in these other shipper experiences that that we we have championed uh as NRED. I think that will continue to be at a pace that sort of meets the market, and we will continue to grow as a business in the short term that way. Long term, again, my crystal ball's fidelity starts to break down after about a couple of years. But I I do see that this is something that is as long as the business pencils it's a viable business, it's inevitable. Um, autonomous or not, uh the electrification of heavy freight continues to grow.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

From the vehicle OEM side, too, we're starting to see more innovation in the battery size, longer ranges. Very excited for the introduction of a new modality with MCS charging. Uh, these are the Tesla trucks that are supposedly coming this year. We're excited to take delivery of some of these trucks. And I think this will also push the industry. The more electric trucks you see on the road, um, the more you say, why am I not doing that? And like I said, I think this will also shift the industry more to an on-the-go charging model, fueling model that's more like filling up a tank of diesel. And I think this will force kind of people to think differently about how they run their operations. And in order to get these trucks delivered, charging has to be, charging infrastructure has to be there. So the chicken and the egg problem, I think, will become less because there will be more available charging, both with this network, the network of third party partners. We work with maybe behind the fence, you know, private depots as we think of them today, opening up to share with other fleets. I am optimistic that that there is a use case for that that drives utilization, monetization opportunities. So more charging options equals more opportunity for electrification, especially when these trucks can drive farther and have more options on the go versus having to make it back to the point of origin in a single charge.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Very good. Well, this has been a great conversation learning learning about Enride, its solutions and what it's doing to reshape the freight industry. Um appreciate you guys coming on. I'd like you to share with the audience so that way they can know how to reach out to connect with you. If you could share what the best method to do that is and where they can go to learn more about Nride.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Sure. The easy one by email would be info at nride.tech, and that's E-I-N-R-I-D-E for anyone who's listening.tech T-E-C-H. Go out to our website. There's a contact form there as well. And then uh by all means, reach out uh directly or or on LinkedIn or uh, you know what? I'm gonna tell them to call you, Jason, and then you can introduce them. Because if you start with Jason, you're starting at a good point, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

Yeah. Well, there's there's a finder's fee, so I'll be collecting names and all that information, and then I'll just be selling them back to you, Sean. Perfect. Happy, happy to do that. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Josie D, are you active on LinkedIn? Visible there.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

LinkedIn's probably the best way. I try to share my observations and insights on the transition to electric and autonomous mobility. And sometimes it's about other forms of autonomy and and electric vehicles, but really excited to uh write more, share more insights specifically about the freight space because I think it's a really fascinating area that not many people know about. But hopefully you learned a little bit by listening today.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

No, I did. I appreciate you both coming on today. Thank you for joining Fill Frequency.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

This episode was produced and edited by the team at Atozi. To find out more, visit autosy.co a u t o z y dot co.