On Site Lift | The importance of ‘long term cost’

The Emilian company presented a ‘total cost of ownership’ analysis on the same type of diesel-powered, lead-electrified or lithium-ion vehicle. The result? Over a 10-year period, the costs including maintenance and fuel of the endothermic engine model are almost three times higher than those of its lithium battery counterpart.

Those unfamiliar with terms of an economic nature will probably not know the meaning of the acronym TCO, which stands for ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ , i.e. the total value of an investment.

This indicator is mainly used when a company is evaluating the purchase of an asset – such as vehicles, equipment or components of various kinds – and emphasises a fundamental concept: one should not only focus on the initial purchase price, because from that moment onwards a whole series of costs  will affect the company’s balance sheet throughout the entire life cycle of the asset. The TCO naturally becomes a useful tool for assessing the impact of expenditure over the years even when purchasing an earthmoving or lifting machine

We delve into this issue with Marco Righi, founder and CEO of Flash Battery, the company based in Sant’Ilario d’Enza (RE) specialised in supplying lithium batteries to manufacturers of industrial machinery and electric vehicles with medium production volumes and high customisation requirements