Next week the commercial-vehicle world gathers in Hannover for IAA Transportation.

Expect a lot of talk about electric vans. Here is the number that talk will mostly avoid.

Electric vans are about 10% of new light commercial vehicles in Europe. Passenger cars are at 20%. The van is running years behind the car - and the usual explanation is wrong.

We are told fleets are cautious, that operators need convincing, that the technology is not ready. But the technology is ready. Electric vans already win the total-cost case for high-utilisation urban routes. The real reason is duller and more damning.

It is a supply failure, not a demand one.

European manufacturers under-invested in dedicated electric-van production. They electrified the passenger car first, treated the van as an afterthought, and were slow to bring competitive models to market. The result is a segment where demand is arriving faster than good product.

And the pattern underneath is revealing. The early electric-van growth came from large fleets whose routes happen to suit electric perfectly - the easy cases. Those are now done. The operators left are the harder ones: mixed routes, no depot charging, smaller businesses with no fleet manager to run the numbers. The direction is clear. The pace is not.

There is an opening here - for whoever actually builds the vans, the depot-charging, and the aftersales that commercial operators demand. It will not be won with a spec sheet. It will be won with uptime.

The van is where the next phase of electrification is decided. It deserves more than a footnote at the show.