HERE COMES TOMORROW
Have no doubt, the automotive world is undergoing a change of epochal proportion, from motorbikes to massive mining machines and everything in between. And it’s happening right now, faster and more certain than perhaps any period in industrial history.
Driving the change are climatic geopolitical events. Delivering the change is climactic corporate resolve.
In both cases, the change is evident and inevitable, and accelerating at a pace few could have imagined just a decade or so earlier.
The ultimate goal is carbon neutrality and in its most fundamental form, that means no more fossil fuel. No oil, no gas, no coal.
Of course, such earth-shaking change after much more than a century of total reliance on Earth’s extracts won’t come without inherent criticism or significant cost, especially in commercial enterprises such as freight haulage. But change is coming, absolutely, and 20 years from now it’s entirely likely that only trucking’s old timers with ever more muddled memories will recall the days when there were things like manual gearboxes, drum brakes, paper log books and the need to pour vast volumes of diesel into fuel tanks.
Sure, there’s little doubt diesel will be still in use for some work for at least the next few decades, particularly in countries like Australia where long, heavy hauls across thinly inhabited regions are likely to remain part of the national landscape for at least another generation or two. However, in the great majority of applications involving commercial vehicles of one sort or another, working in shorthaul roles in urban or regional areas, the energy for road freight will almost certainly be derived from plugging in rather
