Navigating Fleet Digitalization and Work-Life Harmony with Mace Hartley Artwork

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Navigating Fleet Digitalization and Work-Life Harmony with Mace Hartley

January 08, 2025 • Ridecell

In this episode of the Mile Marker Podcast, we speak with Mace Hartley, Executive Director of the Australasian Fleet Management Association (AFMA). They explore the shift toward digital vehicles, emphasizing how electric vehicles (EVs) are redefining fleet operations through software updates and enhanced safety. Hartley highlights Australia's progress in EV adoption, driven by government initiatives, and discusses global fleet management challenges, including charging infrastructure and telematics data utilization. They also delve into the evolution from "work-life balance" to "work-life harmony," promoting a more fluid integration of personal and professional life.

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Navigating Fleet Digitalization and Work-Life Harmony with Mace Hartley

Angela Simoes: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mile Marker Podcast. I'm Angela Simos, you're a host, and today we have Mace Hartley, Executive Director of the Australasian Fleet Management Association, AFMA, welcome, Mace.

Mace Hartley: Yeah, thank you, Angela. It's great to be here.

Angela Simoes: Well, first happy birthday. I understood you had a birthday recently.

Mace Hartley: I did. Just turned 58, well completed my 58th year. Right, because it's one thing with birthdays, right? We turned one after we've lived an entire year.

Angela Simoes: That's true.

Mace Hartley: We haven't just turned 58. We've completed 58, as they say. Your tour around the sun.

Yeah. So now I'm pre 60. You can't round down anymore, right? A 57 round down to 55. I guess I was mid-fifties. Now, I'm just pre 60.

Angela Simoes: Well, and I hear that on your birthday or around your birthday, you actually gave a presentation at a conference in Indonesia focusing on the topic of digitization of fleet management.

Mace Hartley: Yeah.

Angela Simoes: How did that go? Tell me a little about what you talked about in your presentation.

Mace Hartley: Digitalization of fleet management, digitalization of everything, right. Everyone's talking about digitalization. Digitalization, and when you come down to fleet management, a lot of organizations get telematics. So it's the digitalization of data. You get data, you can do meaningful things with it. So what I talked about was, I guess another couple of pillars. One was the automation of manual processes, and so using telematics or the data intelligence and using other systems and automating all that digitalization. But where I spent most of my time was talking about the concept of digital vehicles. And I talk about the fact that EVs, battery electric vehicles are digital vehicles and ice vehicles where they're powered by diesel or gasoline analog vehicles. And what I explored was the concept that really the battery electric vehicle is a computer on wheels. And the reason it's digital is it continues to be updateable. Whereas an ice engine full of lots of parts and its best day was the day you purchased it, and it just gets worse after that.

Whereas Tesla, three years ago released an update on their battery electric vehicles that gave you 7% more mileage, more range on your tank as it were battery. So the other thing about digital vehicles is that you can update the software in regards to safety. So one of the things right now for most of the EVs that have been brought, well certainly in Australia, they all hit and cap safety ratings globally. And Australia equalizes with the Europe. So we're seeing autonomous emergency breaking and pedestrian and cyclists. And they work pretty well except at night, low lights, they're not quite as clever. But what we're able to do with digital vehicles is the sensors, they're able to improve the readings from those sensors so they can fine tune how the car will react to the same sensor that was fitted five years ago. But they can update the software to get better outcomes. And that's why I call EVs digital vehicles.

Angela Simoes: And it's amazing that when you think about it, having a five-year-old sensor that just continues to get better just because of the software. So we're talking about software defined vehicles, software defined sensors. So it's really amazing because as you said, you're actually improving the vehicle. It's not like an ice where the best day of the vehicle is the first day you bought it. And so that translates into much higher value of EVs for fleets because for a fleet, if you can get more years out of your vehicle and less maintenance costs, I mean, that's a big game changer for fleets. Right.

Mace Hartley: Absolute game changer. I think for many fleet managers, they haven't stopped to think about what a digital vehicle looks like or even the concept that the vehicle's going to get better over time. They can change, they can work out how the vehicle can become more efficient and therefore get more range out of the same battery. The ability that the sensor is, the sensor doesn't change, but the fact you can actually understand the data and because it's moving backwards and forwards, they can get better outcomes. The car just gets better. And so we don't have to trade it out after 3, 4, 5 years.

Angela Simoes: I'm curious the difference in reaction, so the Australasian region, their reaction to EVs versus what you're seeing in North America or even other parts of the world, are they embracing it more, less about the same? And then I would love to get your take also on just other challenges in the fleet world. Are there things that North America can learn from Australian Indonesia or vice versa, things like that?

Mace Hartley: I think from a take up of EVs, I think Australia has been a bit of a laggard and have been late to the party. And I think as a percentage of new vehicle sales, we're probably running at about 8% of new vehicle sales now, which is pretty similar to where the US is. But across, when you look across the us, each state's at a different, very different

California killing it, and never else is in a different state of flux. So Australia's a little bit the same for us. What we've seen is the uptakes being driven by government. The motivations for taking an ev, there are several, but if you're a large public company, your shareholders want you to be green, so that's driving their uptake. If you're a local municipality, depending on where your municipality is, your rate payers want you to be green. So that's driving them to onboard EVs what the governments have done. So if you provide services or products into a government department, you actually have to be green because their contracts tell you have to be green. So there's been lots of motivations for people. We're seeing regular people now taking on electric vehicles because in Australia, a lot of our roofs have solar panels. So I have an EV and I charge it off my solar panel, solar panels, so it cost me nothing. So I've done probably about 20,000 miles in my ev. It's probably cost me about $300.

Angela Simoes: That's amazing. So is that a pretty well understood process in Australia?

Mace Hartley: No, we're at the beginning, not the end. And I think one of the challenges with fleets is that you need all this power to charge these cars. And if they're a fleet vehicle, then they utilize throughout the day. That's the reason they're there. So they have to be charged overnight. So that means often they have to be charged at people's

Angela Simoes: Homes, homes or infrastructure. So we've had a couple of conversations about charging infrastructure, and even in California where there's majority, well, the most EVs are purchased are in California. But even there, and I'm from California, infrastructure continues to be a problem. It's getting better. So how does the infrastructure issue compare in Australia

Mace Hartley: Versus It's very similar. It depends where you need to charge. So one of the things we find in Australia is where we have charges for destinations. So when people go on holidays, it's awesome. Mostly they can charge at home, and that's fantastic. But a hot summer's day, everyone goes to the beach. Now those people went to the beach, got to charge their cars potentially to get back and there can never be enough charges when everybody wants to charge.

Mace Hartley: So I think that problem's never going away, but mostly most people can charge at home if they've got a garage. So we've got many situations where people are in high rise or condos and there is no charging infrastructure. So some of the local municipalities are actually putting charges on telegraph poles.

Angela Simoes: Oh, interesting. Have fleet companies in Australia embraced having their employees with fleet vehicles charge at home? Are they really getting more into that and the whole being able to reimburse for charging at home and the process? That can be really complicated too.

Mace Hartley: A lot of them are struggling with those concepts everywhere. Some houses are built 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, so the switchboard at home can't handle the charger. So it's not only you've got to put a charger at that person's home, they actually need to upgrade their switchboard. They need do some rewiring. And so there's challenges around that. Should the business pay for the rewiring, which is going to leave the house in a better condition than it was without the recharging. So there's some tension around who's paying for the switchboard upgrades,

Angela Simoes: Pay for what, and is the government playing a role in there? Because I know sometimes there's government incentives where maybe the utility even will pay for the upgrade, right?

Mace Hartley: Yeah. We're not seeing too much of that on a consumer base. Some of the government supports coming through and funding infrastructure within business.

They've recently funded a program that is looking to put charges in at people's homes, the recharging thing and how you reimburse the employee, most of that's fixed because they're either using most using smart charges. So therefore it can actually measure how much power was used from the person's home and then that reimbursement piece. But the other part about some of the reimbursement is just how cumbersome it is to have to get those calculations and then import them into a spreadsheet and do the mass and then put them into payroll. So I think some organizations are just going to paying a person an allowance and agreed allowance just, which is probably a little more generous, but it saves them hours and hours, tons of paperwork, right? So there's the need to get it right, and then there's the need to be efficient and so no one loses and it cost the company a little more, but they're saving of course on their emissions in a whole range of other ways.

Angela Simoes: Right. I want to get back to the topic of data that you talked about. So talked about how fleets are very well embraced, telematics, getting data from vehicles and then doing something with that data. First question, how do you see that playing out across regions, fleets in Australia, doing something a little more advanced than we are here or vice versa? And where do you see that moving forward? Because even though there's still a lot that's being done, there's still a lot that can be done, especially with AI having more automation applied to the use of data. How do you see that all coming together?

Mace Hartley: It's interesting. The primary reason for people using telematics, and the first bit of insight they want is dots on a map. They want to know where their vehicles are. The second point they dive in is if they can change driver behavior. So they can tell report on harsh speeding events and harsh acceleration, harsh braking. If you can moderate that behavior in the driver, then you use less fuel, less wear and tear on the vehicle, and all of a sudden you're playing a safety game that's also reducing emissions because fuel has a one-to-one relationship with emissions and everything just works. And then you start to deconstruct everything that's possible. With the use cases for data, I think there's a large fleet in the US and they've put air sensors on the vehicles. So that allows them to understand across the greater city, and I think we're talking about 6,000 vehicles, they know the air quality.

Angela Simoes: Oh, interesting.

Mace Hartley: Across the entire city. And for that particular city, it's important because air quality is not so good. So they can provide warnings for people with asthmatic and stuff to stay indoors, and so everything's possible. So I think there's no end in sight of what you can do data with. So one of a use case scenario coming out of Australia, so there's a company that provides vans, like holiday vans. So you get one, and tourists will travel around, they'll sleep in them and they'll travel around Australia. Now, Australia is the same land mass as the us, so let's just put that out there for the folks at the moment just to get a visualization, how big it is. But this company did the telematics because they're trying to help the drivers with a whole range of things. So the brave to provide feedback, but they wanted to know where, once again, they're trying to reduce accident rates. So they're trying to encourage better driver usability of the vehicles. But what they've able to then they've then sold that data to the government for tourism. So they now know where everyone is using all of these national parks because most of these national parks, no ranger sitting there clocking people in and out, what time they get there. So the data possibilities are endless. And when we go to ai, that's allowing us to interpret this lake of data and allows us to make informed decisions quickly. So we've stopped from actually having to just scroll through spreadsheets and run all these filters to get stuff. All of that will be done for you. You'll get the outcome, and now you get to make real choices and implement those choices.

Angela Simoes: I'm also thinking of things like, so driver behavior and reducing the wear and tear on the vehicle is one thing, but then also the vehicle itself, knowing how many years are you going to get out of this vehicle? Predictive maintenance is very well a thing, but also at what point do you know that you should sell the vehicle or do you put it into a different kind of a fleet? Do you trade it in all these kinds of things to maximize the vehicle asset? Right. So are you seeing any movement in that direction as well?

Mace Hartley: Not yet. I'm not seeing any AI being used to that sort of stuff at the moment. One of the fleet management companies in Australia has AI in the system. So it'll help the fleet manager actually suggest to the fleet manager certain things, whether it be predictive maintenance or potentially that particular assets are underutilized. So therefore think about swapping those with high-end users. So it's starting to take over what would normally be a human's role. So the account exec would then speak to the fleet manager and go, here's some opportunities. Now AI is able to actually do those interpretations and give those suggested ideas to the fleet manager directly.

Angela Simoes: Do you think there's an opportunity for some of those decisions to just be automated and then, because right now you're talking about AI is making the suggestion, but it still requires a human to make the decision. Do you think there's an opportunity for some of those decisions to just be made automatically versus waiting for a human?

Mace Hartley: The challenge is that the data is sort of one dimensional. So when we start to talk about some of those decisions, it could be the people that are driving those vehicles have a particular need for that car. So the car may have some special seating from an ergonomics point of view, so the data won't know that. So there's a whole range of other scenarios of the way the business does and operates that the data can't know. Now, maybe you can frame all of that into the data to get a better outcome, put

Angela Simoes: Sensors in the seats and sensors all over. There's all sorts of stuff,

Mace Hartley: But you still, it's still a very human to human thing. The jockey, the driver, has a whole range of things that affect them. So the data is one thing, but I still think you need a person's eyes over the top of it to understand what it means for the business.

Angela Simoes: So again, given your role, you have a very global look at things, where would you like to see the fleet industry go in the next five years? I would say 10, but that just sounds so far in the future.

Mace Hartley: Wow. I'd be 68 then coming to the end of my effective life, I might say at that point, I reckon. But

Angela Simoes: Well then no, starting your point of enjoyment. How about that retirement?

Mace Hartley: I think I'm doing every day now.

Angela Simoes: Right. That's awesome. I love it.

Mace Hartley: I think next five years for many fleets, for some fleets at the very front end of everything that are adopting new technology that are always looking to do more with less, and everyone's looking to do more with less. But for those who are at the cutting edge, I'm not sure where they'll get to if they're able to utilize the full length and breadth of all the data intelligence that's availed to them. I still think five years from now, they'll still be developing new use cases for that data. And what's possible, the thing I think will hold most fleets back will be the jockeys, the drivers. That will be the greater challenge. The drivers are still going to be passionate, crazy lunatics that they are.

Angela Simoes: Right. Well, so then that leads to the question about autonomous vehicles. I mean, we've made significant progress in the technology, but it's still very early days. I think there's some people out there that really had hoped we'd be a fully autonomous society in the next 10, 15 years. But my personal prediction is maybe a hundred years, I don't know, but where do you see autonomous driving sort of taking over the reckless jockeys, if you will?

Mace Hartley: Yeah, it's long way off. It's a long, long, long way off. I think seven years ago we had, at our conference, we talked about autonomous vehicles. We had someone get up and talk about all the possibilities. And they're also saying, oh, five years from now, we're now seven years, eight years from that date, and we are closer, but I don't see where the horizon is. The benefit is that all the sensors and all of the technology that's required for autonomous vehicles, all of that safety techs now in our vehicles each and every day. So we have benefited from the journey because all this safety tech is helping us. And I guess I've got to pause for one sec. There's a different level of safety tech that's operating in the US compared to what's operating in the US and sorry, Europe and Australia. Most of the cars here are just a little behind. Some of the safety tech that we find standard are optional extras here.

Angela Simoes: Interesting. Why do you think that is?

Mace Hartley: I dunno to be just

Angela Simoes: Government regulation maybe?

Mace Hartley: No. In Australia, we have government regulation like every country, but the concept of and capital New Car assessment program operates in most countries around the world. And those programs are driving safety tech. So from an Australia point of view for I think 30 years and CAP'S been teaching drivers that you buy a five star vehicle. And so what they've done over that 30 years is it's becomes harder and harder for the manufacturers to actually meet that five star standard. So right now, we went from 10 years ago, it was all about putting, once the vehicles had an accident, trying to mitigate the damage to the person, the occupant. Now we're at a point where we, they're assessing safety tech to actually prevent the accident from even happening. So it's gone from mitigating what happens to the person once. It's to avoidance. It's actually avoidance. So because Ancap has been so successful, particularly in Australia, most fleets have a five star policy. So therefore, if the manufacturers want to bring a new vehicle into market and they want to sell it, well, fleets want to buy. If it's a five star vehicle, and for your five star vehicle, you have to have this top level safety tech. And so that isn't the same in America, is my understanding.

Angela Simoes: So definitely a lesson that we could learn or adapt.

Mace Hartley: I think there's certainly five star standards. So standards exist in the us but a lot of the safety tech is optional, whereas our vehicles just come as standard with that safety tech.

Angela Simoes: Interesting. I feel like I need to go have another conversation with multiple people to find out why this is right.

Mace Hartley: Yeah. There'll be others that know better. I'm the guy from the other side of the earth looking in. Right.

Angela Simoes: Yeah, no, but it's a great observation and I wonder if people realize that because I think people think at least people here, Americans were the best of everything. We're the top notch of everything. And that's not always the case.

Mace Hartley: Well, none of us are. I mean, as individuals, we're as good as the efforts we want to put into it. And Americans are really patriotic. I love seeing all the flags. If you travel around Australia, you won't see Australian flags on everyone's homes, and we're not as patriotic. But I think the things that drive people are similar but different.

Angela Simoes: So we are recording this episode from AFLA from Live in San Antonio, and it sounds like you are a AFLA vet.

Mace Hartley: Yeah, that's probably my seventh AFLA.

Angela Simoes: Excellent. So two part question. What are you hoping to get from the show? Having been to the show, the conference many, many times based on past experiences, what are you hoping to get from the show? And then what are you hoping people will take away?

Mace Hartley: I think what I stand, well, the reason I come is to actually hear what's happening in another country, to feel the pulse of what's going on and through the sessions, there's a range of personal development opportunities through the sessions that we've had this morning. And I guess my greatest takeaway out of one of the first sessions is we went from work-life balance, which I don't think ever exists for people that are driven to work-life harmony, and that makes sense to me. So that was the key takeaway for me today, the best thing I've got over a couple of hours and the things that I think people are here to learn from is each other. So what Afla does particularly well is gives people time to actually, so we have some professionals up there, they talk to us about a topic, but when we talk to the person sitting alongside us, we go from having a theoretical view of something to being actually having that peer-to-peer conversation about what worked well for them and what my pain points are.

And just that exchange of ideas and success and value helps people get better outcomes. I think that's what AFL does really well.

Angela Simoes: And I'm really happy that you mentioned work-life harmony, because my final question was going to be about work-life balance. So explain a little bit about the difference or the evolution from work-life balance to work-life harmony and what that means.

Mace Hartley: Well, today, I guess they spoke about work-life balance. We're all driven, but putting boundaries in place. So not doing any work after seven o'clock at night, for instance. But we talked earlier offline around the levels of communication we have with people coming at us, whether it be through messenger or a normal text,

Angela Simoes: Slack, everything. It

Mace Hartley: Just keeps coming and you've got to take time to disconnect. I never disconnect. So that's why I think work life harmony is a better word for me, that ebb and flow, rather than just trying to put fences around work because it doesn't work. Fences around work for me stresses me out.

Angela Simoes: So you kind of feel like you're missing out on something or you're, yeah,

Mace Hartley: I'm trying to squeeze something into a defined box.

Angela Simoes: So the harmony is kind of weaving it all together so that you can enjoy both and have an ebb and flow.

Mace Hartley: Yeah, that's what I took from that session.

Angela Simoes: That's good. So are you finding that you already do that, and are there tools that you use to do that?

Mace Hartley: Look, there's lots of tools for managing stress. And stress is brought about by lots of situations, often by workload, sometimes by transactions. But yeah, I've combat stress by I don't have task lists or I do, I have four things I want to achieve today. I don't have the task list that has 200 things on them. I have 200 things to do. The truth is that would just overwhelm me and I can't actually effectively achieve anything. So I just talk about four things each day.

Angela Simoes: That's good because even if you achieved four things off of a list of 200, it doesn't feel like you've accomplished much, even though for that day it actually is a big accomplishment.

Mace Hartley: Correct. We can drown sometimes in the opportunities and becoming effectual because our minds spread across so many different topics.

Angela Simoes: Right. Well, mace, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much. I very much enjoyed it.

Mace Hartley: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you allowing me to do it.