Advanced Energy Council – Partners in Your Electrification Strategy
At MODEX 2026 members of the Advanced Energy Council (AEC) held a panel discussion for companies in the material handling industry beginning their electrification journey. They provided insight and answers to a variety of questions for transitioning from internal combustion engine (ICE or IC) and lead acid battery forklifts over to lithium-ion energy. If you missed it, welcome to this AEC this overview. Comments have been condensed and edited for clarity. MODEX 2026 attendees can use the link below to hear the session in its entirety.
Moderator:
Victoria Kickham, Senior Editor DC Velocity Magazine and Supply Chain Xchange
Panelists:
Martin Boyd, Chief Marketing Officer, Big Joe Forklifts
JF Marchand, Marketing & Customer Success Director, UgoWork
Lucia Salcido, Product Development Manager, Flux Power
AEC MODEX 2026 Panel Discussion Overview
Victoria Kickham (VK) – It seems that electrification has really been gaining momentum lately. What are your thoughts?
Martin Boyd (MB) – When I joined this industry 35 years ago, everybody has been saying the market is going electric. And it’s true. If you look at the market overall, inclusive of all classes of lift trucks, the market has moved to electric, around a 70-30 (percent) split today. Seventy percent of the North American market is electric products … When I say the market has been going electric, it’s primarily because of Class 2 and Class 3 (forklifts). If you strip out Class 2 and 3, you’re seeing strong movement away from Class 4 and 5, which are internal combustion products, and moving over to Class 1 platforms, which is why we’re on stage today. Getting away from lead acid and going to alternative solutions, whether it’s lithium or hydrogen fuel cell, that’s why it’s becoming more prevalent today.
VK – Lead acid batteries have powered lift trucks for decades, so why are more operations interested in transitioning their internal combustion fleets, whether it’s propane or diesel, over to lithium?
JF Marchand (JF) – It provides a couple of advantages over lead acid. It provides more capacity, more charging power. It shortens the charging periods, which allows more up time with only one battery per truck. It also eliminates a lot of the maintenance requirements that you had with lead acid. Marty talked about a transition to electric, but I think we can talk about the transition within the electric segment from lead acid to lithium. Because on top of all that, those products bring an intelligence layer to the power source. You can talk about telemetry, you can talk about data management, energy optimization. All of that is made possible with the new technology that is out there.
VK – I want to switch gears and talk about workplace safety. What are the top safety variables companies need to re-access when transitioning from internal combustion or lead acid to lithium?
JF – With lithium-ion, there’s considerations with the energy source. Lithium is more energy dense. It’s high voltage, so there are dangers to it. Years ago, battery providers were coming into the market, but their products didn’t have layers of safety within them. So, my recommendation for those contemplating the switch (to lithium) is to work with a provider that has UL listed products. That ensures that there are layers of safety that have been tested by independent organizations such as UL. The second layer is the truck OEM approval of those batteries. I’m talking about slide-in batteries. If you’re changing the battery source in a sliding scenario, you need to make sure the OEM knows that it’s a lithium-ion battery inside the truck because that can bring in some safety considerations.
Lucia Salcido (LS) – Before even deploying a lithium system into your operations, it’s recommended to do a power study with your battery supplier and your charger supplier so every system in your fleet will be communicating. You need communication with your chargers into the battery to add another layer of safety.
MB – I’ll follow up on that with the truck OEM. Every truck OEM handles lithium battery installations in the field differently. Anytime you slide out a lead acid battery, and you slide in a retrofit lithium solution, it’s considered a modification. Any modification you make to a truck that impacts either safety or stability requires OEM approval.
If you’re going to put in a third-party battery, no matter who’s it is, that modification approval by the OEM comes in the form of a capacity nameplate. You’ll have a plate on every truck that says what the lifting capacity is, how much you can lift, how high and it also contains a field on there that says whose lithium battery is in it. Make sure that when you install the lithium battery you get a new nameplate on the truck that says that forklift now has that particular energy source in it.
JF – To sum it all up, it’s not a consumer product that you’re buying. You’re purchasing a new solution, so you need to partner with an expert to guide you through that transition, whether it is an integrated chassis product or a slide in. You should be raising a (red) flag if there’s no UL or OEM approval for that product.
VK – Are there any myths that still persist around lithium-ion in industrial settings?
JF – Of course. There’s a lot of talk about chemistry in lithium-ion, but the real safety consideration is how the whole system is integrated. The lithium cell itself is not more or less safe. It’s how it’s been integrated within the battery module. What are the safety mechanisms and what testing has been done? The whole system is what safety should be about and not just the chemistry.
LS – Something else is that BMS (battery management system) technology is there to protect the assets themselves. There’s different thresholds, temperatures, voltages that when the BMS starts reading those, it will immediately trigger a safety response in the system.
VK – Which telemetry signals matter most for improving fleet productivity? Utilization, state of charge, charge events, what should we look at?
LS – I would say your most important unit of measure in your telemetry platform is state of charge. The state of charge graph will give you the discharge and charging curves. From there, you’ll understand if you’ve over deployed a battery or under deployed. From there we can manage opportunity charging. We can see how idle times are being arranged or set up different charging thresholds or times depending on breaks or operations of your systems.
MB – At a higher level (with) the telemetry aspects, being able to acquire data wirelessly to understand what is going on with the lift truck. The operator, is he charging it at the right times? Looking at the battery data remotely is critical in understanding exactly how they’re charging, how they’re utilizing the product. That’s the biggest challenge that we have in getting customers to lithium is really just changing the charge profile and training the operators that when you get off the truck – smoke break, bathroom break, lunch break – put it on charge. Telemetry, data is everything.
VK – How do companies use that data to drive decisions and not just for monitoring?
JF – Every company has their own platform and that’s the challenge to use that data and have it tell you a story and give you usable insights. The raw data, state of charge for example, is nice to look at, but if you don’t have real action you can do about it, then it’s not creating value.
LS – To add on that, data doesn’t need to drive tactical decision, but it needs to provide insights into what your business or operation needs.
VK – What makes data adoption fail, even when the technology works?
LS – What I’ve seen is that you’re feeding data that is not quality data into your system. Data from across all of your systems is not aligning. You need to align all your different platforms and not have them live in different silos. If all this data is not talking to each other or not correlating, it’s creating confusion and not driving business decisions. What I mean by quality data is data that has been filtered and matches all of the systems.
VK – We have (data) feeds from batteries, the chargers, the buildings, etc. Why has this explosion of data not translated into better decision making for most operators or has it?
LS – To connect to what I just said, you have all these different systems and they’re all driving data and creating a data link. What operators are not thinking of is, how do I use all that data? Every system has different time stamps and you’re creating a massive data link, and no one is thinking, how will I retrieve all that data? That’s adding costs into your operation and storage on your data. You need to start thinking about how to reduce that data link and mine all that data.
MB – Failure comes in different modes. Let’s say I do a power study and it’s not the harshest operation in the facility and you’re using that data to spec out a battery and how powerful of a charger is needed. Failure mode in that sense is if you don’t have accurate data coming from the power study itself, you end up with a smaller battery or too powerful of a charger when it’s going on those breaks. That’s where data can mislead you.
Lack of data will work in the opposite direction. (For example), I don’t have any power study data and I’m basically guessing on the application. What I’m going to do is put the biggest battery in it and put the fastest charger on it to guarantee success that the customer will have an optimal experience. It may be an optimal experience, but it’s not going to be optimal for his wallet because he’s going to be paying a lot for lithium and for the charger. It’s really important that when you get the data from the application, you are putting it into a real operation.
JF – One thing that is important is that if you’re planning on a transition, you should work with experts who can guide you. That data lake is good, but if you don’t know where to fish, you’re not going to get what you need. You need the information to dimension the product right for the application.
VK – If you had to simplify the transition to an advanced solution to three criteria, what should you prioritize?
LS – There’s three things they need to prioritize. One is power study. What battery systems you’ll need, what charger systems you’ll need, where you’ll put them, if you even have the electrical structure you need. Second one is having a supplier who gives you all the telemetry data in a way that’s easy to digest. Third one is (to) work with all your different suppliers and have them all aligned to help you with the transition.
MB – I’m just going to go with one because I think it’s the most important one: Don’t go it alone. Do not attempt to do this on your own or think it can’t be that hard. This is what we do. We’re here to drive this momentum into a solution that is helpful.
JF – My number one is start with your business objectives. Don’t make a change just to make a change. Second, partner with experts. Use multiple sources of information to find the right application for your business goals. Finally, manage change because it is a change in your organization. If you want to make it a success, make sure the change is encouraged within the organization.
MODEX attendees and MHI members can listen to the full session using this link: https://mx2026.mapyourshow.com/8_0/sessions/session-details.cfm?scheduleid=116
For more information about the Advanced Energy Council: mhi.org/aec
For further articles from the Advanced Energy Council:
Opportunity Gained: Busting Old Myths About Advanced Energy Forklifts in Smaller Operations
Lithium-ion Batteries Come Full Circle
Choppy Waters Ahead: Navigating a New Wave of Tariffs
When a Battery Becomes a Razor: Using Lithium-ion Batteries in Peak Shaving Energy Strategies
ICYMI: AEC’s ProMat 2025 Discussion Panel Overview
Second Acts: How Used Lithium-ion Batteries Can Continue Performing in Your Operations
Recalculating: Including Productivity Gains in Total Cost of Ownership
