The Future of Commercial Vehicles

Commercial vehicles are essentially productive assets, often part of fleets. Consequently, decision criteria to deploy new technologies are largely based on objective, operational and financial analyses rather than subjective criteria as it is mostly the case for personal vehicles. This dichotomy is an essential driver for the ramp up of electrification, autonomous driving, consumption models or vehicle connectivity.

Commercial vehicles include mainly heavy trucks, light commercial vehicles (LCV). Depending on whether they operate in urban environments or on highways, these vehicles face very different opportunities and constraints which justify the deployment of certain technologies.

For instance, many cities are progressively limiting access to urban centers to only clean vehicles as last-mile deliveries continue to grow. Conversely, long distance trucking operates on divided highways where interactions with other road users tend to be more limited than in metro areas. This, combined with a shortage of truck drivers, makes autonomous driving an appealing option.

I previously wrote on these topics in 2020 and 2017 and invite you to read The Future of Trucking (Mar 2020) and Commercial Vehicles go Electric, Autonomous, Connected and Shared (Dec 2017) for earlier perspectives. Let’s assess where we stand today.