Five PepsiCo México distribution centers in the Valle de México have run fully electric delivery fleets since the third quarter of 2023, with 320 units between Tlalpizáhuac, Naucalpan, Xalostoc, Tláhuac and Atizapán, according to The Logistics World on 21 November 2023. Grupo Bimbo said in August 2023 that it would add 1,322 electric units in Mexico during 2023 and close the year with 2,508, as reported by Cluster Industrial on 15 August 2023, which implies a fleet of about 1,186 before that year. Mexico Energy Partners found no published confirmation that the year end number was met.

Neither program has been described publicly in terms of what the electricity costs. That is the half of the decision a fleet director cannot get from a vehicle vendor. Three hundred and twenty units across five sites averages 64 per depot, and 64 vehicles plugging in on the same yard is a new electrical load measured in hundreds of kilowatts.

Vehicle price and diesel saved are the arithmetic every proposal already contains. What decides the business case in Mexico is what the charging load does to the site's billed demand under its CFE tariff, and whether the existing service capacity carries it at all. Settle those two before signing a vehicle order.

What the two Mexican fleets actually did

PepsiCo México put 320 electric delivery units into service at the five centers named above and states an avoided 2,796 tonnes of CO2 a year from them. It also added the first electric tractor unit in its Latin American operation, a Scania with a stated range of 250 km and 49 tonnes of CO2 avoided a year. Both figures are the company's own estimates.

The 1,322 units Grupo Bimbo set out for 2023 break down as 1,001 Vekstar Stellar vanettes, 300 JAC e10x, 15 Scania trucks and 6 BYD tractor units, with a company estimate of 6,600 tonnes of CO2 avoided. The 2,508 figure was a year end target reported on 15 August 2023 rather than an audited outcome. Bimbo's stated corporate targets are a 50 percent reduction in direct and indirect emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

Both fleets sit in the Valle de México on urban delivery duty cycles. Vehicles that return to one yard every evening charge together, on the same transformer, in the same hours.

What the charging load does to the CFE bill

A distribution center supplied in media tensión with contracted demand above 25 kW a month buys electricity on a Gran Demanda en Media Tensión schedule, the threshold CRE printed in the schedules published in the DOF on 28 January 2022. A site supplied in alta tensión is billed on a different schedule again. On the horaria version, CFE bills energy in three daily periods, base, intermedio and punta, and levies two further charges per kilowatt, distribución and capacidad. Those two charges do not follow the kilowatt hours consumed. They follow the peaks the site sets.

Run the arithmetic on the depot average above as an illustration, not as a figure from either company. Sixty-four vans on 7 kW alternating current chargers, all drawing at once, is 448 kW. On 11 kW units it is 704 kW. Neither number is a claim about PepsiCo's installation. Both show the order of magnitude a fleet director should assume until the charger specification is fixed.

Charging after 22:00 buys the kilowatt hours in the cheaper periods and keeps them out of punta. It does not by itself protect the per kilowatt charges, because those depend on the demanda facturable formula in the tariff schedule that applies to the site's distribution division. Pull that schedule before modeling anything. The mechanics of how demand charges are set on a GDMTH account decide whether a staggered charging schedule is worth the control system it requires.

Sequencing matters more than charger count. Vehicles that each need a partial recharge across an eight hour window do not all need full power at once, and software that spreads the draw costs less than the switchgear and service upgrade a simultaneous peak would force.

Whether the site's service capacity carries it

The second question is physical rather than commercial. A distribution center's contracted demand and transformer were sized for docks, refrigeration, lighting and offices. Several hundred kilowatts of charging is a step change on that base.

Raising contracted demand means a request to CFE Distribución. Where the increase exceeds what the existing service can carry, it means a study and physical works, each with a lead time the operator does not control. That lead time, and not the vehicle order book, usually sets the date the fleet can actually run. The charging installation itself falls under NOM-001-SEDE, Instalaciones Eléctricas de utilización, which governs the conductors, protection and enclosures on the yard.

The practical rule is short. Get the interconnection answer before ordering vehicles, because vehicles arrive in months and service upgrades often do not.

Onsite generation and storage at the depot

Article 17 of the Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, published in the DOF on 11 August 2014, exempts generation below 0.5 MW from holding a CRE generation permit. It exempts nothing else. An array at a distribution center still needs an interconnection contract with CFE Distribución and municipal construction approval.

That 0.5 MW ceiling sits close to the illustrative charging load above, which is the point most solar proposals for depots skip. Under CRE's rules for onsite generation at the depot, set out in RES/142/2017 and published in the DOF on 7 March 2017, medición neta credits surplus against later consumption rather than paying cash for it. Solar also produces in the middle of the day, when the vans are out on route. Without storage the generation and the charging never meet.

That is the case for battery storage to hold the peak down. A battery charged in the base period and discharged into the charging window lets a depot add vehicles without raising the demand the site is billed on. Whether it pays depends on the spread between the demand charge avoided and the installed cost, which has to be priced per site.

The emissions arithmetic is a transfer

Diesel liters avoided become kilowatt hours purchased. Scope 1 falls at the tailpipe and Scope 2 rises at the meter. SEMARNAT publishes a Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional each year for Registro Nacional de Emisiones reporting, and every megawatt hour a depot draws from the grid carries that factor.

The net change therefore depends on the grid factor and on whether the operator buys Certificados de Energías Limpias or contracts renewable supply directly. A fleet electrification case that reports only the liters of diesel removed is incomplete for disclosure purposes. The tonnage figures published by both companies above are company estimates and should be read as such.

The Mexican market in the numbers that exist

AMIA, citing INEGI, reported 6,309 hybrid and electric light vehicles sold in Mexico in August 2023, equal to 5.5 percent of light vehicle sales, of which 4,412 were hybrids, 511 plug-in hybrids and 1,386 battery electric. The figure was reported on 7 November 2023. Sales for January to August 2023 totaled 42,510 units, or 5.0 percent of the market. On those numbers battery electric vehicles alone were close to 1.2 percent of August sales.

Globally the IEA's Global EV Outlook 2023, published in April 2023, put electric car sales above 10 million in 2022, or 14 percent of car sales. Electric light commercial vehicles nearly doubled to more than 310,000 units, or 3.6 percent of LCV sales. The IEA also noted that 2022 was the first year in which the increase in the electric LCV share outpaced the increase for electric passenger cars. That is a comparison of growth in share, not of volume, and the two are often confused. For 2030 the same report puts electric cars at 35 percent of global sales under stated policies.

The U.S.-Mexico Task Force for the Electrification of Transport report, presented at COP27 in November 2022, put hybrid and electric vehicles at 4.4 percent of Mexican light vehicle sales on AMIA data. Manufacturing is a separate question from adoption, and we have set out our view of Mexico as an EV manufacturing base elsewhere.

On urban access, the instrument a Mexican operator deals with is Hoy No Circula in the Valle de México, run by the environmental authorities of Mexico City and the State of Mexico and coordinated through the Comisión Ambiental de la Megalópolis. It is not a European style zero emission zone, and how a unit is treated turns on the holograma it carries. Confirm the current rules before counting circulation days in a business case.

Model your depot's charging load before you order vehicles

Send Mexico Energy Partners the route and duty cycle for the vehicles you plan to replace, the twelve most recent CFE invoices for the site, and the distribution center's contracted demand. We return the overnight charging load profile, the effect on billed demand under your tariff and division, and whether the existing service carries the fleet or needs a CFE Distribución upgrade. The work is desk based and no saving is promised before the site data is in.

Request a fleet charging assessment

Sources

• The Logistics World, report on PepsiCo México's first electric tractor unit and its five fully electric distribution centers with 320 delivery units, 21 November 2023.
• Cluster Industrial, report on Grupo Bimbo's plan to add 1,322 electric units during 2023 and close the year with a fleet of 2,508, 15 August 2023.
• IEA, Global EV Outlook 2023, April 2023, for 2022 electric car and electric light commercial vehicle sales and shares and the 2030 stated policies share.
• AMIA, citing INEGI, monthly hybrid and electric light vehicle sales for August 2023 and for January to August 2023, reported 7 November 2023.
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and Alianza MX at the University of California, U.S.-Mexico Task Force for the Electrification of Transport, Diagnosis and Recommendations for the Transition of Mexico's Automotive Industry, presented at COP27, November 2022.
• Congress of the Union, Ley de la Industria Eléctrica, DOF, 11 August 2014.
• CRE, RES/142/2017, disposiciones administrativas de carácter general para generación distribuida menor a 0.5 MW, DOF, 7 March 2017.
• SENER, NOM-001-SEDE, Instalaciones Eléctricas de utilización.
• CRE, tariff schedules for CFE Suministro Básico, published in the DOF on 28 January 2022. Category "Gran Demanda (mayor a 25 kW-mes) en Media Tensión", horaria and ordinaria, and the DIST and DIT categories in alta tensión.
• CFE, Gran Demanda en Media Tensión Horaria tariff schedule, published by distribution division.
• SEMARNAT, Factor de Emisión del Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, published annually for Registro Nacional de Emisiones reporting.