Wellington-based Critchlow Geospatial has won the Technical Excellence category at the New Zealand Spatial Excellence Awards for its SwitchMyFleet solution which helps New Zealand fleets and commercial vehicles transition to EVs. 

The awards were held in Wellington on February 10 and its another triumph for the Critchlow Geospatial team which was also the global winner of the Location-Based Services category at last year’s Geospatial World Innovation Awards held in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 

Developed with New Zealand government co-funding through the Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund (LEVCF) administered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), SwitchMyFleet has been developed to accelerate the uptake of commercial electric vehicles to support more sustainable transport systems.  

It is a practical tool that gives people the ability to assess their EV requirements by answering the question: “What do we need, based on where we go and what our payload is?”.

The free online evaluation tool helps companies develop a business case for transitioning their fleet to electric vehicles. It demonstrates the viability of electric vans and trucks in the user’s real-world environment, allowing the user to test different vehicle types and battery sizes to determine their optimal fleet requirements. SwitchMyFleet has been engineered so that EVs return to base with comfortable levels of spare battery.

It is powered by authoritative address and three-dimensional road network data from NationalMap that is combined with route optimisation algorithms that balance time, distance, and energy use to calculate the metrics that fleet operators and transport businesses need to build their business cases for transition.

Critchlow Geospatial managing director Steve Critchlow says the team is “thrilled” to be recognised for another award.  

He says it’s “a real validation of the potential for SwitchMyFleet to have a global impact, one that can help accelerate not just New Zealand, but the whole world towards more sustainable transport systems”. 

EECA transport portfolio manager Richard Briggs is also congratulating the team. 

“We are pleased that Critchlow Geospatial has been recognised at a national level for their team’s ability to bring together the physics of moving vehicles, New Zealand geospatial data, and route optimisation algorithms to build a free online tool to enable our transport sector to make the transition from ICE to electric, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving costs,” he says. 

*Go to critchlow.co.nz/products/switchmyfleet for more information.