Engineers, product managers and technical leaders from OEMs and across the electrification ecosystem attended Day 1 of the 2026 Future of Electrification (FOE) virtual conference. The annual virtual event sparks industry-steering discussions about the global movement to electrify industrial, commercial and utility vehicles.
The fifth annual FOE Conference—From Hype to Reality—directly parallels the electrification landscape’s own evolution and maturity. This year’s session topics further shift the industry’s focus and discourse from ‘early adoption’ to the real-world drivers, impacts, and challenges. Learning about the latest in AI, advancements enabling high-voltage and high-power applications, regulations and more—Day One prepared attendees for the future’s accelerating electrification.
Opening FOE 2026 with a topic at the forefront of OEMs and suppliers’ minds was Keynote Speaker Dr. Michelle Dickinson—nanotechnologist, entrepreneur and Chief Strategy Officer at Workr, an AI-powered industrial robotics company. She explored AI’s foundational role in electrification’s future, breaking down why adoption is already a competitive necessity that will only grow in importance over the next three years. She illustrated this in a ‘three-wave’ framework.
OEMs have begun differentiating themselves by integrating AI with battery management systems (BMS), motor control optimization, thermal management, vision-based quality control and predictive failure detection, representing the ‘first wave’ currently ongoing. Dr. Dickinson projects the ‘second wave’ will arrive in the next 24 months, emphasizing fleet-level intelligence: routing, charging schedules, duty-cycle learning, digital twins and orchestration. Finally, the ‘third wave’ will see autonomous, AI-driven machines making more operational decisions within 36 months. This includes scenarios such as forklifts choosing jobs and charging times, machines scheduling their own maintenance and autonomous tractors optimizing operations.
However, as discussed in this session, the architecture decisions that OEMs make today are critical. Choices regarding autonomous agents, over-the-air updates and continuous learning systems, and their validation through real-world deployment, will impact market competitiveness throughout all three waves.
First referenced by the keynote Dr. Michelle Dickinson, regarding the necessary digital protections for agentic AI, Daniel Visioli, an embedded software engineer at Zapi SpA, led a session on the growing importance of electric platforms’ cybersecurity. Visioli emphasized that cybersecurity cannot be an afterthought. Instead, the secure by design philosophy “must flow into design, implementation, testing, release and maintenance and decommissioning.”
By integrating risk assessment and cybersecurity practices as early as possible, OEMs can better prepare for complex regulatory requirements, such as compliance with the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act, which is mandated for most products with digital elements by 2027. In practice, this secure by design philosophy also facilitates the creation of needed technical documentation (e.g., Software Bill of Materials, EU Declaration of Conformity) and improves vulnerability management (e.g., reporting, tracking, resolution and disclosure).
Sessions during the middle of Day One’s agenda focused heavily on how OEMs now approach electrification: system integration. The first session, led by 4e Consulting’s General Manager, Paolo Patroncini, guided attendees through the full process of electrifying a compact dumper. This ZAPI GROUP project demonstrated the proof of concept for adapting an existing diesel platform, showing how integrations between motors, inverters, battery systems and software create a bigger impact than optimizing any single component, converting it to 96V electric architecture without changing pre-existing geometrical constraints.
Prioritizing the use of parts and components from within the ZAPI GROUP’s portfolio, Patroncini explained the complex project’s timeline. The process involved: 3D scanning for frame packaging, 3D reverse engineering, performance simulations, electric component selection, mechanical and hydraulic adaptation, wiring harness improvements, proto-assembly and testing and custom software development and debugging.
Meanwhile, Inmotion’s Mattias Magnusson and Staffan Holm, Chief Engineer and Mechanical Design Manager, respectively, covered the importance of simulations. Using advanced thermal management as an example, the pair discussed how iterative simulations accelerate development speed and time-to-market.
During the midday hydraulics integration session, Kathy Wells, the Editor-in-Chief of OEM Off-Highway and Equipment Today, led a discussion on how OEMs are approaching system-level design and the lessons they’ve learned from real-world deployments. Panelists Shane Faucheux, Business Development Manager, Electrification, Applied Engineered Systems, and Joseph Budden, eHydraulics Portfolio Manager, Danfoss, emphasized that electrification and systems integration must be approached holistically. While many OEMs might still approach electrification as a sequence of component swaps and isolated optimization, adapting to the future of electrification requires cross-functional alignment across teams, integration across subsystems, real-world validation and flexible systems design.
Benny Forsman, another ZAPI GROUP expert, provided a simple framing for the evolution of electric platform integrations, stating, “The off-highway industry is progressing from fragmented, component-based electrification toward fully integrated, supplier-driven systems that maximize design efficiency, cost effectiveness and technological maturity.” Forsman then visually showed how this electrification journey progresses through electric drive with discrete components (Generation 1), electric drive with integrated solutions (Generation 1.5) and electric drive with integrated systems (Generation 2).
Closing out Day One, Dr. Ray Gallant, VP Sustainability and Productivity Services at Volvo Construction Equipment, examined the methodology for achieving heavy equipment sustainability—and how it crucially depends on energy management. Dr. Gallant explained that the three technologies converging and driving heavy-duty electrification today are connectivity (or digitization), sustainable power (or electromobility) and automation.
Connectivity that leverages telematics data provides the information needed to oversee and optimize operations—providing invaluable insight into how vehicles and equipment move around worksites. With new platforms and energy flows, Dr. Gallant informed attendees that they should expect worksites to look different when telematics data is visualized.
Sustainable power depends on the blended usage of battery electric, alternative fuels, grid connectivity, hybrid platforms and advancements in hydrogen. Electric drives and controls provide the capabilities—precision, repeatability and efficiency—needed to act on the telematics data.
Lastly, automation (including AI) brings the other technologies together, performing operations according to continuous worksite optimizations.
Achieving an optimized worksite with this methodology requires significant changes—and being open to them while analyzing data and determining solutions. However, the results are undeniable and can carry outsized impacts on emissions. Per Dr. Gallant’s presentation, “one Electric EC230E offsets the greenhouse gas emissions of 13 passenger cars.”
Attendees at the 2026 FOE Conference engaged with industry-leading experts on the most significant topics, drivers and challenges facing industrial electrification. From AI and improved cybersecurity to system integrations and worksite optimizations, the conference is exploring real-world applications with an emphasis on the near-term future.
Missed the first day and would like to watch the recording? All sessions are available on-demand for the next 30 days on the event platform and then on ZAPI GROUP's YouTube channel.