This year’s Amazon FASTforward event in Berlin brought together more than 700 attendees to build meaningful connections, establish new partnerships, and explore potential collaborations with like-minded stakeholders in the transportation industry.
Industry leaders who spoke or attended the event included:
- Luca Saffioti, ‘Global Feed Ecotrans’ Logistics & Finance Controller
- Cristiano Façanha, Director of Road Freight Electrification
- Maynie Yun Ling Yang, Bloomberg Electric Vehicles Analyst
- Eelco van Veen, Director International Fleets and Zero Emission Truck Sales, DAF
- Carla Detrieux, Director of Business Development, Volta
- Martin Hink, Senior Manager Zero Emissions Vehicles Business Solutions, Daimler
As part of the event, Amazon spoke about CHALET, which stands for Charging Location for Electric Trucks - a new, open-source software designed to help private industry, governments, electricity network operators, and local authorities determine where electric charging points for heavy-goods vehicles should be built. Identifying where charging infrastructure should be built is one of the most pressing challenges facing the transportation industry in its efforts to decarbonise, and tools like CHALET could help accelerate the pace of logistics decarbonisation in Europe.
“The event brought together diverse stakeholders, including industry experts, policymakers, and sustainability advocates, facilitating meaningful conversations and forging new partnerships for advancing sustainable practices in the fleet management sector.”
At the event attendees learned about broader industry initiatives such as the Sustainable Freight Buyers Alliance (SFBA), were provided with a technology and policy update from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and delved into some examples of how Amazon is decarbonising our transportation network through collaboration and innovation.
“Sustainability is everyone's responsibility. Effective progress here will require the support and commitment of governments around the world to work together and engage in climate policy to drive decarbonisation at scale. Success will depend on the commitment of transportation partners, which is why we are building a cross-industry community of companies, organizations, individuals and partners through the Amazon FASTforward community.”
Across both days, attendees had the opportunity to take part in one-to-one meetings with carrier managers and business coaches, and get first-hand technology and solutions experience by visiting more than 30 exhibition booths from Amazon, OEMs, and other service providers, including ABB E-Mobility, ChargePoly, Tritium, Shell, and Bosch. Additional spaces were set up for attendees to explore, including a technology area with six of the latest models of electric vehicles from Volvo, Daimler, DAF, Volta, Tevva, and Iveco and three charging stations, and an exhibition area where the sustainability packaging journey was showcased.
The Sustainable Fleet Awards were also held during the event. The awards celebrate individual fleet operators and teams who have started the journey towards fleet decarbonisation and who are helping to transform the transportation industry. Over one hundred companies were nominated across four award categories - Early Mover, Scale Champion, Mile Master and Carrier Excellence - with five winners announced during the ceremony.
What our carriers said about the event:
“We are very proud of the [Sustainable Fleet] award given to us by Amazon – as it is a very important customer for us and who is helping us on our way to decarbonisation.”
“We can take away a lot of information which we can already try to apply.”
“I am very proud to have won the [Sustainable Fleet] award. We put a lot of time and effort into it, a lot of planning, and that’s how it all worked out so smoothly.”
