Why OEMs need an energy story.

There is now a growing list of zero-emission truck models on sale in the UK, and the gap between them is closing. Range, battery size, charging speed, the headline specs are converging, model year on model year. The vehicle has become necessary but no longer decisive. A buyer can get a capable electric truck from several manufacturers. So what actually wins the deal?

Increasingly, it is the answer to a question OEMs have traditionally left to someone else: what does this thing cost to run?

The buyer isn’t buying a vehicle. They’re buying a cost.

A fleet operator does not buy a truck. They buy seven years of total cost of ownership, purchase, energy, maintenance, downtime, residual value. For a diesel, that calculation was stable and well understood, and fuel was simply a cost that went up.

Electric changes the maths in one important way: energy cuts both directions. It is a cost you can shrink and, uniquely, a revenue you can earn. A parked, plugged-in electric vehicle is a flexible grid asset. Charge it at the right hours and the energy bill falls; let it support the grid when it isn’t moving, where market access allows, and it generates income. Diesel never did that.

That means the energy line is now the swing factor in the TCO case. Whoever frames it credibly controls the argument. Right now, almost nobody in the OEM channel is framing it at all.

The energy story OEMs leave on the table

Today the typical handover ends at the vehicle. The truck is delivered, the spec is excellent, and the energy question, tariffs, charging windows, demand charges, network bands, flexibility markets, is handed to the customer to solve alone.

Most don’t solve it. They charge on arrival, at peak rates, and never touch the flexibility markets at all. The result is a fleet that costs far more to run than it needed to, and an OEM whose TCO pitch is quietly weaker than the truck deserves, because the most valuable line in the calculation has been left blank.

The energy story isn’t missing because it’s small. It’s missing because the vehicle and the energy have always been sold by different people.

The size of the prize, and why it’s a truck story

The numbers are not marginal. They are the kind that move a purchase decision.

Time-of-use optimisation alone typically takes a meaningful slice off the energy bill. Flexibility revenue stacks on top. For trucks, the scale is in a different league, an electric HGV has far more controllable power and sits at a depot longer, making it a far larger grid asset than a van:

Modelled against unmanaged charging. Around 40% of the modelled value is charging cost savings available through smart charging today; the remainder depends on demand charge reduction (in development) and flexibility revenue (planned). Indicative ranges only, subject to TOGL modelling. Actual value depends on duty cycle, battery size, tariff structure, site constraints, charging windows, integration availability, and flexibility market access.

But none of it materialises on its own. A big battery is the potential. Capturing it needs software that knows when to charge, when to hold, when to sell load to the grid, and how to do all of that without ever missing a departure. The value is real, and entirely contingent on orchestration.

Sell the truck pre-optimised

Here is the move available to OEMs. Stop selling a vehicle, and start selling a managed energy asset.

A truck that arrives with orchestration built in changes the conversation with the buyer: time-of-use savings, flexibility revenue as market access allows, and readiness first, so that smart charging is never the reason a vehicle misses its departure. The TCO line on the proposal is no longer a hopeful spreadsheet the customer has to realise themselves. It is a modelled case with software behind it.

That does two things at once. It differentiates on an axis most competitors aren’t touching, while everyone else is still arguing about range. And it shrinks the effective cost of ownership, which is what closes the deal. The same truck, sold with an energy story, is a materially better commercial proposition than the same truck sold as steel and a battery.

Where TOGL fits

OEMs do not need to build this themselves, and the ones quietly attempting proprietary orchestration stacks will find it is a different discipline from building vehicles.

TOGL is the layer an OEM can put behind that energy story. It is designed to be vehicle-agnostic and hardware-agnostic, working across a mixed fleet through supported integrations with the chargers the customer already owns and whatever CPMS sits underneath, and the hard part it is built to absorb is the fragmented telematics that make trucks especially difficult to orchestrate. eHGV support is in development, and vehicle data access depends on what each OEM exposes through its API. The intent is that the vehicle arrives as a pre-optimised energy asset at the point of sale rather than a project the customer starts from scratch.

The OEM keeps the customer relationship and the differentiated TCO story. TOGL is the orchestration layer underneath, built to talk to vehicles, read the grid, and make sure the savings and revenue in the proposal show up in the operator’s accounts.

“The same truck, sold with an energy story, is a materially better commercial proposition than the same truck sold as steel and a battery.”

The point

The next electric truck won’t win on range alone; the spec sheet is already a tie. It will win on what it costs to run, and, increasingly, on what it earns while it’s parked.