The Ever-Increasing Role of Electric Vehicles in France's Mail System

Autonomy's Manuel Chaufrein spoke to eve pietriga , the CEO of VEHIPOSTE . Vehiposte is a subsidiary of La Poste Groupe , and is in charge of financing and managing their vehicles (63,000+ total and 23,500+ electric).

Manuel: Can you tell us about yourself and your role within the La Poste Group and Vehiposte?

Eve: Of course. I have been the CEO of Vehiposte for nearly two and a half years. I have had a long adventure with the La Poste Group since I joined the Group about fifteen years ago. In each position, I have had the chance to work on cross-functional subjects, starting in real estate and subsequently in the financial management of the Group. This allowed me to have a 360-degree vision of the Group and this vision of the different fields and activities is absolutely key in the way we approach our work within Vehiposte.?

Vehiposte is committed to meeting all the mobility needs of the users of the La Poste Group. And the La Poste Group is in the midst of transformation with many new industries. Industries that are being invented, and industries that are being transformed. I am very lucky to hold this management position at a time when the mobility industry is transforming - there is electrification and we will see that there is much more. This really allows us to follow some very exciting issues.?

In terms of organization, we have 43 employees within Vehiposte. To give you some figures and orders of magnitude, we have the premiere French utility vehicle fleet with 63,000 vehicles and the premiere electric fleet also with 23,500 vehicles at the moment, or 36% of the electrified fleet.

Manuel: And what is your role within Vehiposte?

Eve My role within Vehiposte is to manage and coordinate the different players. Coordinating our actions of Vehiposte's management means both ordering vehicles to meet the needs of our internal customers in the group, managing the fleet, and optimizing the use of the assets that constitute our means of mobility. To do this, we also work with many external partners. This is also one of the benefits of working within Vehiposte as we are focused on the internal needs of the Group but also in daily contact with the whole industry and our suppliers and partners. We work in particular with two fleet managers who support us on a daily basis on the entire purchasing and maintenance element, and another partner who also supports us on the valuation and sale of end-of-life vehicles, since we own our fleet. This is one of our specialities. Beyond this, we are organized, I want to say, quite classically, with a financial, IT, commercial department and above all an operations department - the heart of the reactor.

Manuel: The Group is in full transformation, and Vehiposte declares that your ambition is to be the leader in the decarbonization of vehicles. Can you tell us about this ambition?

Eve: Of course! In fact, it is a path that we have initiated a long time ago. The La Poste Group was a pioneer with President Bailly on the first electric Kangoos in the early 2010s and this partnership has continued. It is a part of our DNA. We can even talk about co-construction with local players and producers of means of mobility, not just vehicles, to shape products that allow us to be at the center of decarbonization.?

I am of course thinking of the first Kangoo ZE that we developed with Renault, and that we tested on a large scale in 2010. We were far from talking about electrification as we are talking about it today -it was a real challenge.?

We then worked with the manufacturer Ligier on the Staby. We have a fleet of ad hoc Staby which is a product designed in response to a postal need. We have almost 10,000 of these vehicles in our fleet - the small stable electric three-wheelers. The latest in the series of vehicles developed for these needs are the electric cargo bikes where, there too, we see a product that is now booming and is becoming popular. It's been a while since we launched it.?

The launch of a new product, and what's more electric, raises a lot of new questions, particularly from a maintenance point of view, since la Poste is present throughout France and therefore this assumes that we can quickly repair all the vehicles. The entire environment must follow so that the daily life of these vehicles goes smoothly.?

By electrifying the fleet, we are making a very strong contribution to the decarbonization of our means of mobility and, in doing so, to the SBTI trajectory (project intended to contribute to the fight against global warming through the commitment of companies) that the La Poste group is pursuing. We are working closely with the Social Engagement Department of the La Poste Group on these subjects that are close to our hearts. This goes beyond electrification - we are really trying to continue in this logic.?

I have spoken a lot about the electrification of utility vehicles because we started there, and our main customer is the Mail Branch. However, we also have the challenge of electrifying private vehicles. We then find the challenges of other companies with whom I can talk when we discuss electrifying service vehicles, company vehicles, (with potentially slightly longer distances to manage) and fears relating to autonomy to which we respond via charging solutions. This is gradually being put in place. Beyond electric vehicles, we are also working a lot on promoting car sharing, carpooling and have also been testing a mobility credit for a year with some volunteer employees. So in fact, it is a world of slow mobility that we are trying to promote at all levels.

Manuel: The issue is extremely broad. You were talking about a first priority customer; how does that work in practice? How far do you go in terms of internal-external customers - how does it all work?

Eve: I don't have any external customers. All of Véhiposte's customers belong to the La Poste group: mail of course, parcels, and then really the entire Group, so both La Banque Postale and the digital subsidiaries. Everyone goes through Véhiposte for their means of mobility. In practice, the way we support our customers starts with a good understanding of their needs, which vary greatly from one branch to another, and of course the needs evolve. This is less true, of course, for tertiary functions.?

On the other hand, on the industrial side, you can clearly see the enormous growth of the express and parcel economy. Cubic volumes have evolved significantly in recent years, to enable us to deliver larger parcels in terms of volume compared to the letters we were initially used to delivering. All of this are factors as well.?

To go into concrete detail, we can talk about very specific issues. That is to say, a postman stops his vehicle up to 200 times a day. Even if he only drives a few kilometers, that's a lot of stops! We? use of our vehicles heavily, and that is why we often have vehicles adapted to our use. Our issue then is not an issue of autonomy. We need a small battery rather than large, heavy batteries that will allow us to travel many kilometers. This is obviously not the case for private vehicles that will equip commercial populations for example. There, their issue is to be able to travel for as long as possible, without refueling or without actually going to recharge. The challenges are not the same -we work on meeting these needs at the team level. This also involves very significant coordination when we talk about electric vehicles because obviously, you need the infrastructure: the charging stations in place, at the right time, and correctly sized in relation to the number of vehicles ordered. All of this is learned - it takes a little time. Given the size of the fleet, we have a question of scale to assess each time. At the level of Véhiposte and La Poste, this takes on a unique dimension and we cannot fail. Because what we test on a small scale must then work on the national territory, and it must work.

Manuel: It's phenomenal -always impressive. To follow up on what you were saying, you have an extremely large fleet of more than 23,300 electric vehicles: how do you source these vehicles and charging solutions?

Eve: It really happens in a co-construction logic, I think it's important to keep that in mind. We are not just in a customer-supplier relationship. I cited the example of the Kangoo ZE, these are movements that are structural - it was done in support and co-learning with the manufacturer. In this industrial partnership that is being created, the coordination of the players is essential. Every month, we meet the main manufacturers with whom we work. All these vehicles necessarily involve a lot of orders, a lot of maintenance, a lot of rotation. At La Poste, we are subject to the public procurement code and all of this takes a certain amount of time to set the framework, in order to ensure an operational mode of operation. There are close relationships with the Purchasing Department of course, with whom we work a lot, and then with the manufacturers. Vehiposte focuses exclusively on vehicles. It is the real estate sector of La Poste that ensures that the charging infrastructure is present on the sites for all service vehicles, company vehicles and company vehicles.

The charging stations for operating vehicles are managed by the Mail branch on its industrial sites and by the Parcel branch. They have an ad-hoc agreement on vehicles. So we have a slightly different logic and this is managed at their level. Here too, historically as we started electrification with Mail, this was set up gradually with a partner who supported the electrification and the installation of the stations on Mail's industrial platforms. We are now in a phase of rather renewing the first stations that had been installed to best support the vehicles. Especially since, for a few years now, we have been moving into the era of connected stations, and so there is a real interest in recovering information on this connected equipment. We are working on it -it is really an important topic at the moment. There is a project called the OGE project - it is a major project to install stations on the Group's tertiary sites that is currently being launched.

Manuel: It's exciting because we can clearly see that decarbonization allows you to have a leading position. You were the first. You are also the first in terms of mass, you are the first in learning. You are working on a very broad decarbonization-electrification diffusion. To also go further in our discussion, we note that renewable energies are becoming more and more present in France. For the future, we are all going to ask ourselves about La Poste and Véhiposte: are you planning to integrate renewable energies, solar? And with solar, can we imagine that La Poste also starts to set up BESS systems (editor's note: Battery Energy Storage Systems). How do you imagine these systems, how could you integrate them, how would this happen in the future?

Eve: On these elements, specifically on solar and BESS, these are subjects that La Poste Immobilier is currently monitoring, particularly on charging infrastructures. At Vehiposte, we have several subjects that we are studying that are precursors to retrofitting - we are working on that. And then we are also working a lot on a point that we have not yet addressed: the batteries’ lifespan. The challenge is not only to decarbonize, it is also to pay attention to the material balance and we have an interest in the material balance, -if the battery is able to last, if the rest of the vehicle will be able to last. So, we have a challenge on that. We are also working on the use of second-life parts, on the ability to extend the life of the vehicle, safely of course, so that all this goes as well as possible, in a harmonious manner. We realize that we can "push" an electric vehicle battery, so there is a challenge of aging the fleet in good conditions. These are really subjects on which we are actors at the level of Véhiposte, in any case on the PICE (editor's note: Parts Issued from the Circular Economy). We are moving the industry in this direction. On the retrofit, we have some experiments. On solar, there are solar car parks which are actually set up at the level of the Poste Immobilier and they are working on the BESS.

Manuel:It's extraordinary to find an actor like you, in France, who is taking this leadership. What would be your global vision on decarbonization, perhaps a short summary?

Eve: A short summary - that's not easy. I would say on decarbonization, finally, the movement is launched. I think we have contributed to giving the impulse, and we can be happy about it. We feel that now, the machine is in gear. However, this requires significant coordination. It is a real collective challenge. On an individual level, we are also working on it within our ??small company?? Véhiposte. It is also everyone's challenge to ask themselves the question of their mobility in their daily home-work trips. It is really about finding coherence and rethinking mobility. In this respect, it is true that we have had the experience of giving up the car with a mobility credit, or car sharing that can encourage us to do so. It's not easy to start. And then in fact, it also allows you to rediscover other ways of getting around or managing your mobility needs. So I think that, if I have a summary word, it is to say to ourselves that we are both in a collective challenge and that, individually, everyone must translate it as best as possible in terms of possible decarbonization of their mobility.

Manuel: Thank you very much, it's exciting. We should all thank you, whether individually, or in terms of social and societal approach, to have a large group like you taking this leadership - we need more companies like yours.

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