Graham McCabe is an industry leader in transport planning and traffic engineering with over 25 years experience in state and local government and consulting. He has been working on fleet electrification since 2018 when he designed a new 1000 bus electric public transport system for the Philippines’ 3rd largest city. An experienced advisor to government and industry, Graham has written guidance on ensuring property developments and the transport are EV ready and has developed a EV charging demand model to advise the service station industry on their site viability and has been working on tackling who benefits from electrifying trucking. We asked Graham some questions about his work.
You’ve been at the forefront of transport planning and traffic engineering for over 25 years, and in 2017 you designed a 1,000-bus electric public transport system for the Philippines’ third-largest city. What were the biggest operational and logistical lessons from that project, and how do they inform large-scale fleet electrification today?
Graham McCabe: When I developed the system, only China was had deployed electric buses at a large scale and there was a lot of OEM (bus manufacturer) and local (Philippines) scepticism about electrification. Since then, technology (buses, charging, batteries and solar) has significantly changed and bus operators should no longer be looking at “if” they electrify, but how quickly they can do it without losing in any tender on operational costs. Governments have, in many cases, ended the purchase of diesel buses and now it is a matter of how long until all buses are electric.
You’ve written guidance on making property developments “EV-ready.” What are the top three design or regulatory considerations developers must get right to ensure charging infrastructure is future-proofed and aligns with net-zero goals?
Graham McCabe:
- Understanding how and where vehicles are going to charge is critical, particularly for the Third-Party Logistics (3PL) industry. Some distributors will want charging at the loading dock to control the cost of electricity while others will want trucks to charge elsewhere, so knowing this can save time and aborted infrastructure installation costs.
- The National Construction Code (NCC) and Greenstar assessments differ in their requirements – NCC only requires that sites are “EV Ready” – having the infrastructure installed, while Greenstar requires a limited number of charges to be installed. If you are going above the minimum requirements, then getting the right amount of infrastructure/chargers requires understanding who will be going to a site and when they will need charging, as this affects the electrical headroom required and loading balancing.
- EVs fit as part of a package of solar, batteries and other electrification opportunities for business. By engaging with engineers (transport, HVAC, power) at the start of a development, the power flows across the day can be matched to the combination of systems so the solar can feed site uses or batteries and both can be used for EV charging, grid stability or energy market arbitrage.
Your EV charging demand model advises service station operators on site viability. Can you explain how that model works and how it helps businesses balance investment risk against rapidly evolving charging technology and utilization patterns?
Graham McCabe: Service stations have two sources of revenue – fuel and Quick Service Retailing. In areas where cars can park off-street in garages and driveways, most charging will be done at home, with little need for public EV stations. The model uses a combination of property information, demographics, travel demand and EV take up trends (for both private and fleet vehicles) to estimate how much public charging will be required and how much competition for charging there will be and identifies if a site is sustainable on a fuel basis over the long term. If people are no longer stopping for fuel, then they won’t also purchase the more profitable items from the retail component. Similarly, we have seen investment in upscaling the retail offer based on 20+ minute charging times, with the CATL and BYD charging technology providing 400+ km of range in 5 minutes, this effort to cater to demands based on existing EV fleets could be abortive.
Many organisations have solid data on Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but Scope 3 can be 90% of their footprint—especially in industrial precincts with shared fleet charging. What unique challenges does shared-use charging present for Scope 3 accounting, and what practical strategies can precinct operators adopt to measure and mitigate those emissions?
Graham McCabe: Scope 3 emissions, such as from the activities of your 3PL operator, are challenging to map. For example, your 3PL uses a charging hub or charges at a loading dock, but to measure your scope 3 emissions you need to know where does that energy come from?, how was it generated? It gets even more challenging if they are using subcontractors (eg last mile parcel delivery) or you are claiming carbon credits. Then you have multiple chains of complexity that need to be mapped , tracked, and reported to investors and government.
You’ve also researched “who benefits” from electrifying trucking. What equity, commercial and policy factors need to be addressed to ensure electrification delivers broad-based advantages—for fleet owners, drivers, host communities and the energy grid?
Graham McCabe: Similar to the issues with Scope 3 emissions, who benefits from the electrification of trucking needs to be a multi-party conversation. 3PL operates on very tight margins, and those who benefit from the cost savings from electrification could make or break commercial operations. Charging at a commercial hub at $0.60 per kWh would be completely cost uncompetitive against a competitor with a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for $0.08 per kWh. 3PL customers are asking for electrification but could be unwilling to carry the costs of the capital expenditure on the vehicles in their delivery charges (and would likely expect the benefit of the operational cost savings).
