Commercial Fleet Break-Even Analysis: Diesel vs BEV vs Hydrogen
Identify where diesel, battery-electric and hydrogen reach cost parity under your mileage, energy-price and ownership assumptions.
What this tool does. The TCO calculator shows total cost under a single scenario. This break-even tool shows how sensitive that result is to changes in diesel, electricity and hydrogen prices. It is not saying hydrogen only works at a specific GBP/kg; it is showing the price bands where each drivetrain becomes more or less competitive under the assumptions you enter.
When to use it. Use this after the Fleet Readiness Score and the Real-World Fleet TCO Calculator if you want to test whether the answer is robust or highly sensitive to utilisation and energy prices.
What sits behind the numbers. The logic includes capex, energy, maintenance, residual value and driver cost, and it can reflect utilisation penalties where BEV productivity falls enough to require extra vehicles or extra driver cost to deliver the same workload. That matters because some parity points are driven by fleet productivity rather than energy price alone.
Break-even analysis is the economic competitiveness test within technology commercialisation. It shows which combination of mileage, energy price, capex and ownership period must be true before a cleaner drivetrain becomes a rational commercial choice. The result is not a forecast; it is a boundary between viable and non-viable operating conditions. That boundary helps decision-makers identify which risks can be managed through contracts or infrastructure and which would leave adoption dependent on assumptions outside the fleet’s control.
What to do with these numbers
If you want to model total cost under a single scenario rather than test price sensitivity, use the Real-World Fleet TCO Calculator.
If the limiting issue is structural rather than numerical, the next step is usually advisory rather than another spreadsheet. You can send me your assumptions or book time via the Advisory page and we will pressure-test the strategy with your board or investors.
Fleet Strategy Advisory
The numbers are a starting point.
The hard part is what you do with them.
This calculator will tell you where diesel, electric and hydrogen land on cost. It will not tell you which contracts justify the switch, how to structure a pilot that protects your downside, or how to make the case to your board. That is usually where I come in.