Model

This fleet electrification planning tool shows projected costs and emissions of a fleet of vehicles from light-duty pickup trucks and SUVs up to large trucks such as highway snow plows. The tool works by loading data from a Google Sheets document containing sheets with specific names and formats, and showing graphs and summaries on this site.

Inventory

The tool works by loading a list of currently active vehicles from the "FEPT-Inventory" sheet. The key things about a vehicle for the model are:

• Class Name: the US GVWR Classification of the vehicle type (e.g. 1, 2, 2b, up to 8). See e.g. wikipedia article for more information about vehicle classification. This is used to look up whether an equivalent ZEV is available at the end of the vehicle lifespan.
• Estimated Replacement Value: The dollar amount to replace this vehicle in 2025 dollars with an ICE equivalent.
• Target Life: The lifespan of this *and following* vehicles. Both ZEV and ICE scenarios will replace the vehicle with a new one at every this-many years.
• Annual Use: The number of km/year travelled by this vehicle.
• Fuel Use: The average number of litres / 100km used by this vehicle in standard operation.
• Fuel Type: The type of fuel used by each vehicle. Only three options are supported: Dsl/Gas/Grid.

Limitation: only fixed-size fleets are supported.

Availability

The tool also loads a list of assumptions about when ZEV alternatives will become available for each weight class. It loads this data from the "FEPT-Availability" sheet.

• Class Name: The class name that each row is about.
• Year Available: The first year in which a ZEV of the named class is available for purchase in the ZEV scenario.
• Fuel Type: Fuel type of the assumed-available vehicle. Currently only grid is supported, but H2 and CNG may be supported in future.
• Ignore?: Tell the web tool to ignore this row by setting the value to ignore or leave it empty to let the row be loaded and used.

Limitation: it should be valid to have multiple rows about each class name, so that a user can express that e.g. in 2030 a class 3 truck will be available with a 25% premium, but also in 2040, that type of vehicle can be acquired with only 10%. Currently though, this is not implemented.

Scenarios

The tool examines two scenarios.

• The ICE Scenario is one in which fleets continue to use similar internal-combustion engines (ICE) to the ones they use historically.
• The ZEV Scenario is one in which fleets are changed over time by replacing vehicles with zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) at their natural end-of-life, as of the year at which a ZEV of the same class is commercially available (assumptions about availability are the data rows in the "FEPT-Availability" sheet of the google worksheet.

Perhaps the ZEV Scenario should more specifically be called the Saul Griffith Recommendation, as he has advocated this specific carbon reduction strategy for fleet and building managers.

Scenario Costs

The costs and emissions in the scenarios are calculated as the result of:

• Fuel
• Vehicle Replacement
• Charging Infrastructure

Limitations: maintenance and insurance are not included.

Fuel

Fuel Cost and Emissions Assumptions

Fuel Type	Cost (2025 $CAD / litre-equiv)	Emissions (kg CO2e / litre-equiv)
Gasoline	1.67 $/l	2.3 kg/l
Diesel	1.66 $/l	2.7 kg/l
Grid Electricity	0.23 $/l = 0.1 $/kwh * 2.25 kwh/l	0.06 kg/l = 0.03 kg/kwh * 2.25 kwh/l (*, **)

(*): Emissions for grid electricity in Ontario are actually represented within the model as per-year projections from IESO, rather than the average value shown in this table.

(**): The 2.25 kwh/l is an approximation for at least two reasons: diesel has slightly higher energy density than gasoline, and perhaps more importantly, the power efficiency of electric and internal combustion engines are different at different loads and speeds.

Limitations: the long-term cost of all fuel types is difficult to predict. Projections can be obtained from e.g. federal energy regulator, but those projections are not included in this model.

Vehicle Replacement

The model simulates a regular vehicle replacement process, in which vehicles are purchased on their model year, used steadily for their target lifespan according to their Annual Usage value, and then replaced with another vehicle of the same class. In the ZEV scenario, if a vehicle of the identical class is assumed to be available in the year of purchase, then a ZEV will be purchased within the ZEV scenario at an amount that is the (replacement value of the vehicle with internal combustion engine) * (1 + ZEV price premium fraction).

Limitations: the GB data includes a target replacement year for [current] vehicles, but that value is not used within the model.

Charging Infrastructure

The cost of charging infrastructure for ZEVs is modelled as a flat fee of $3,000.00 for each vehicle making a switch from ICE to ZEV.

Limitations: no emissions are calculated for this activity, and it's not considerate of the context of individual charging sites such as any necessary building upgrades.