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Mike Waters' blog: 3 April 2012 - Gassing up

Date: 03 April 2012

Mike Waters is senior insight & consultancy manager at Arval, the leading vehicle leasing and fleet management company.

For the past year Coca-Cola has been running a trial to test a Biomethane HGV on its fleet and now the results are in. There is a great deal of debate around new vehicle technologies, with much of it centring around electric, so this is a new and interesting angle.

The 12-month programme was designed to assess the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption, costs, reliability and operability. To do this Coca Cola ran an Iveco Stralis HGV powered with Biomethane and compared performance with the Diesel powered equivalent. They installed a temporary gas refuelling infrastructure and vehicle activity data was logged via onboard telemetry.

Biomethane is a renewable transport fuel with a similar energy content and chemical composition to natural gas. Gas vehicle technologies are well used in other countries where they are operated in significant numbers.

With a vehicle range of 357 km, Coca-Cola clearly believe that the gas truck was a success given that they have invested in a fleet of 14 more on the back of the trial, and a permanent gas station which is due to be fully operational from the middle of this year.

The gas vehicle is estimated to have achieved a 50% saving in greenhouse gas emissions, compared to the diesel equivalent and it is thought that this could have been even greater if they'd used a permanent filling station rather than a less efficient temporary version. Additionally, operating the gas vehicle on Biomethane reduced the fuel costs by nearly 13%.

So this is an interesting trial, and a reminder that when it comes to cost effective and sustainable new technologies, there are a range of options. While some favour electric, and others hydrogen, Coca-Cola have made a commitment to Biomethane.

With strengths and weaknesses attached to all of these new technologies, its almost impossible to predict which will become the most mainstream but one thing's for sure; its going to be really interesting journey to see how the alternatives stack-up and develop in the future.



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