Electric Vehicle Import/Export Flows in Maritime Ports: Are Local Stakeholders Monitoring their Arrival?
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Within the global climate change risk mitigation frame, automotive OEMs are progressively replacing ICE-powered cars with electric vehicles in their model ranges. This strategic move is deeply impacting every level of their supply chains, including maritime ports. To shed some light, in the absence of relevant academic literature, on how closely local stakeholders are monitoring this evolution, multiple port authorities’ and logistic service providers’ institutional websites, as well as auto industry-related web sources, have been browsed (Q4 2023), looking for comments on the arrival of electric vehicles in North American and European auto ports. Study shows that contexts differ from one region to another, even from one port/one stakeholder group to another, leading to various attitudes ranging from spontaneous early movers to hyper-cautious followers.
Introduction
Within the global climate change risk mitigation frame, automotive OEMs are progressively replacing ICE-powered cars with electric vehicles (EVs) in their model ranges.
Such a strategic move is deeply impacting every level of their supply chains, from raw material and component sourcing to finished vehicle distribution, through manufacturing and assembly.
This is especially true of maritime ports, where a number of production and/or distribution operations are performed, and which are consequently led to heavy investments and deep technical/organisational adjustments would want to host potentially growing EV import/export flows.
Although it could be of interest for instance from a strategy-making perspective, which has generated over the years a wealth of papers addressing among others the “early movers vs. late followers” issue (Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988; Lowe & Atkins, 1994; Dos Santos & Peffers, 1995; Ulhøi, 2012; Jianget al., 2017; Dreiling & Bican, 2022; Chenet al., 2023), no attention seems to have been paid to this situation by academic authors. When mentioning electric vehicles in the context of maritime port operations, they include cargo handling equipment and deal with topics regarding port fleet management (Ambrose & Jaller, 2016; Mundulaet al., 2021; Agarwala, 2022; Issa Zadehet al., 2023), port energy management (Pariseet al., 2015; Attanasioet al., 2023), or more widely port sustainability policies (Alamoushet al., 2020; Konstantinoset al., 2023; Baker et al., 2023; Karagkouni & Boile, 2024).
A research question has stemmed from this paradox in the academic field: are maritime port professionals, more specifically Port Authorities (PAs) and logistics service providers (LSPs), taking into consideration the potentially massive arrival of EVs on their premises?
To shed some light on the issue, a sample of port authorities’ and logistic service providers’ institutional websites, as well as auto industry-related web sources, have been browsed (Q4 2023), looking for comments on the arrival of electric vehicles in North American (NA) and European (EU) auto ports. More precisely, the PA subsample holds 70 institutions (29 in NA, 41 in EU); the LSP one holds 48 companies (15 in NA, 33 in EU).
Study Results
Even if PAs have their own share of investments and adjustments to make in this respect, auto LSPs are more involved in the design and operation of EV import/export processes: not only do they also have to invest in physical, but they have furthermore to conduct personnel training, yard and shopfloor reorganization and safety/security adjustments. Intuitively, one might therefore assume that LSPs would be more likely than PAs to mention EVs as a source of strategic interest and/or operational preoccupation.
In the same way, despite the growing EU protectionism trend, Europe appears to be a rather EV-friendly market, whereas NA vehicle-handling ports are likely to remain heavily focused on managing imports and exports of ICE-powered cars. Here again, EU ports could be intuitively expected to be more vocal on EV-related matters than their NA counterparts.
Both these assumptions are however not supported by the global numbers provided by the study.
Be it along the stakeholder axis (PAs & LSPs) or along the regional one (NA & EU), proportions of subgroup members for which comments on EVs have been found are roughly the same: 40% of LSPs vs. 37% of PAs, and 41% in NA vs. 36% in EU. The only notable difference would be that LSPs seem to be more focused on the topic than PAs, as 1 out of 4 address EV-centric issues directly on their institutional websites vs. 1 out of 10 for PAs.
But crossing the two dimensions leads to more varied situations.
North American Port Authorities vs. European Port Authorities
NA PAs have the highest percentage (45%) among the sampled stakeholders for which comments on EVs have been found. It may be due to the fact that in their region, even if EVs were to account for a small proportion of import/export flows, total volumes remain so big that it would mean hosting large numbers of cars. Therefore, they have to convince OEMs that they are sufficiently closely following up on the evolution of the EV market and are willing to be part of the distribution network.
To that end, NA PAs’ initiatives range from having discussions with OEMs on how best to accommodate greater EV volumes (Port of Baltimore) to having a project already underway to equip a terminal with the necessary infrastructure to support EV throughput (Port of Hueneme), through working closely with terminal operators to develop the infrastructure needed for EV handling and charging (Port of New-York—New-Jersey) or laying the groundwork for providing locations and charging capabilities as they are identified by the local vehicle processor (Port of Portland, OR).
Conversely, EU PAs are proportionally the fewest to show some sign of consideration for EVs (32%). Actually, on the average, European ports are managing relatively thinner automotive volumes, serving smaller markets; also, as EU has decided to limit/stop EV imports and to support a local production which will be predominantly absorbed by local demand, potential EV imports and/or exports in European ports could be significantly limited in the medium/long term. Consequently, regional PAs may not feel a strong commercial interest in this new market.
North American Logistics Service Providers vs. European Logistics Service Providers
“NA LSPs have for some of them taken various initiatives to prepare for incoming EV flows. In Brunswick, all four private terminal operators—BMW, IAC, Mercedes-Benz USA, WW Solutions—have made investments to support the increase in electric vehicles; Amports has added charging infrastructure on both the US East and West coasts to deal with the growth in EV shipments. In Jacksonville, efforts are being made by the vehicle terminal operators, which along with Southeast Toyota Distributors, includes Amports and WW Solutions, to gear up through additional charging infrastructure, terminal parking realignments and training.
However, NA LSPs are only 1 out of 3 to refer to the potential arrival of EVs on their premises. Although it means attractive new revenue opportunities, adjusting to this market evolution comes with the need for technical investments and organisational redesigns, which feature ongoing uncertainties and various challenges, thus inciting many, especially small to middle-size ones, to adopt a “wait-and-see” strategy and explaining limited/no communication on the topic.
EU LSPs know that whatever the geo-political context, thanks to an environmentally-conscious consumer market, they will face a sufficiently strong demand for the handling and storage of electric cars. In Zeebrugge-Antwerp (Belgium), there has been a growth of up to 15% year-on-year (2021–2022) in electric vehicle volumes, leading to the development of new parking facilities with charging infrastructure for electric trucks and vehicles. In Emden (Germany), more than a third of the vehicles handled in 2022 were electric variants, and the trend towards EVs is continuing apace.
Therefore, for those willing to profit from this new business opportunity, it’s strategically important to early and explicitly position themselves on the market as EV specialists. As a result, EU LSPs are nearly 1 out of 2 (42%) to share information and thoughts regarding EV market evolution and distribution processes.
On the whole, the study shows that, differing from the lack of interest in the topic shown by academic authors, and despite variations from one region to the other/one stakeholder group to the other, a significant proportion of potentially involved professionals is paying attention to the possible impact of EV market growth on their operations, some early movers have already started to make the technical investments and organizational redesigns needed by the management of EV flows.
Conclusion
For maritime ports, to design a strategy regarding the hosting of EV import and/or export flows is an obviously difficult task, considering the high level of uncertainty associated with the multiple commercial, technical and regulatory dimensions of the market.
Based on their local context and information provided by their environmental scanning process, some ports remain (hyper) cautious in their marketing communication, let alone in their investment initiatives, while some others are fully convinced of the great business opportunity offered to them by EV handling/storage operations and adjust accordingly their marketing and investment strategies.
Hopefully, in the medium-/long-term, demand will become more predictable, technology evolution will be stabilized and (inter-) national regulations will be harmonized, making strategy-building less hazardous for all involved stakeholders.
Meanwhile, the present study may have helped open a new research track for academics and provide professionals with potentially useful feedback on how the issue is addressed by different stakeholders in different regions.
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