Flip the Fleet

Accelerating electric vehicle uptake

Feature project

Flip the Fleet is a citizen science coalition of families and businesses that drive electric vehicles(EVs) in New Zealand.

Project goals

Our goal is to accelerate uptake of electric vehicles in New Zealand by:

  • Providing scientific data on EV use, cost savings, efficiency, battery health and environmental benefits.
  • Helping EV owners help each other by sharing data on our vehicles’ performance in New Zealand conditions so that business investment in infrastructure, public policy and our own choices maximise the benefits and pleasure of EV ownership.
  • Informing the debate so that we can reliably counter misperceptions about EV constraints and benefits.

How will we get there?

Electric vehicle owners and fleet managers upload monthly dashboard metrics and data stored in their vehicles’ computer to the Flip the Fleet database. Software instantly demonstrates and benchmarks each vehicle’s performance, efficiency, cost savings and Return on Investment, battery degradation rates, electricity demand, environmental and social benefits. A full-scale marketing campaign, concentrating on social media networking, will spread the lessons emerging from the project into private places and times where mainstream media will not reach.

Who is involved?

Flip the Fleet has been conceived, designed and tested by Dima Ivanov, and Henrik Moller. Dima spends most of his days showing business owners how they can improve their performance based on industry benchmarks, generated by his company PowerStats. He holds a Bachelor of Design, majoring in Transport Design (Massey University Scholar, 1st Class Hons) and is also an advisory board member to Massey University Master of Business Analytics course. Both Dima and Henrik are passionate electric vehicle owners.

  • An electric vehicle charging.
  • An electric vehicle driving - photo by John Roxborough.
  • An electric vehicle dashboard.
  • An electric vehicle interior - photo by John Roxborough.
  • An electric vehicle being plugged in.
  • A Tesla electric vehicle - photo by John Roxborough.

Thanks to John Roxborough for the use of his local imagery.

Primary Funder:
PowerStats Ltd. and Ecosystems Consultants are carrying the development costs until external funding can be found to accelerate development of the software and design of KPIs.

Co-funders:
An Otago pilot of Flip the Fleet was assisted by a seeding grant from the Participatory Science Platform, managed by Otago Museum on behalf of the national Unlocking Curious Minds programme (September – December 2016). A research grant (September 2016) from the Otago Energy Research Centre to Dr Rakesh Pandey, University of Otago, is assisting the project by developing an accounting model to estimate cost savings and return on Investment from driving electric vehicles.

Publications:

Ivanov, D & H. Moller (in review, 2017). Flip The Fleet: a Citizen Science Approach to Accelerating Uptake of Low Emission Vehicles in New Zealand. Flip The Fleet Research Report No. 1.

Moller, J.A., Moller, H. & D. Ivanov (in review, 2017). How much fuel use is avoided by Low Emission Vehicles? Flip The Fleet Research Report No. 2.

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Ecosystems Consultants.