Electrification knowledge center

As the world moves towards a more sustainable future, fleet electrification is becoming increasingly vital. As a fleet manager, transitioning to electric vehicles can seem like a daunting task, but having a solid EV adoption strategy in place can make all the difference. This strategy should cover a variety of topics, including assessing EV suitability, selecting specific models, determining optimal charging infrastructure and identifying the different ways you may need to update your existing operations.

Vehicle Utilisation

When considering transitioning to EVs, it's important to examine the utilization of all your current vehicles. By analyzing your driving data, you may find that you can rightsize your fleet and replace multiple vehicles with a single EV. This would not only help take another CO2-emitting vehicle off the road but it can also reduce your operating costs.

Determining where you can go electric 

New EV models are entering the market every day and just like with any fleet vehicle, choosing the correct one for the application is critical. In order to determine the best EV for your application, there are three questions that need to be answered.

1. What is the maximum distance the vehicle will drive in a day?

The first step is to understand what the range requirements are for the vehicle, which is most likely going to be determined by how far the vehicle will drive in a single day. 

2. What is the total cost of ownership of the vehicle?

Next, you need to consider a vehicle's total cost of ownership (TCO), which includes the acquisition, maintenance and operating costs over its lifespan. It is true that EVs usually have a higher upfront cost than ICE vehicles, but they often have a lower TCO in the right applications. In fact, Enterprise Fleet Management found they could potentially replace 45% of their fleet with EVs, which would save them $167 million over the life of the vehicles. 

3. What is the vehicle's dwell time and where does it occur?

Finally, to ensure your vehicles are fully charged when they need to be, you have to consider where they sit and how long they will be there. This will determine how many charging stations you will need, where you should place them and the overall power requirements. Every fleet’s dwell time and location is going to be different so it is important to use data from your own fleet when reviewing this question.

Planning charging infastructure 

Planning out the required charging infrastructure is one of the more difficult aspects of transitioning to electric vehicles. Questions regarding the optimal placement of stations, as well as how many and what type of stations you will need must all be answered to establish your EV charging needs.

Also, it’s important that you reach out to your utility company early in your fleet electrification process. They will provide insight into any regulatory requirements or permits and will need to be made aware of your increased energy usage. Additionally, many utilities offer special electricity rates or other EV-related programs that you may be able to take advantage of. 

With these questions answered, you are ready to choose the specific models that will work best for you. 

Identifying other organisational changes

Incorporating EVs into your fleet means more than just replacing vehicles. In order to optimise operations, you will have to make some updates to your day-to-day procedures. This will include monitoring new data such as an EV’s state-of-charge, charging history and active charging status. You should also create new procedures, like a defined charging program, and provide training to your drivers so that the EVs are always ready for the next duty cycle. Your telematics solution should provide you with the ability to create custom alerts to help to notify the management team or the driver of specific situations, like when an EV is not charging when it is supposed to be, to help streamline these procedures.  

Considering finance options

When building your business case for adopting EVs, understanding the financial impact of adopting EVs will play an important role. There are various financing strategies to help reduce the upfront costs of acquiring both EVs and charging infrastructure. For example, you might consider operational leasing, where you can rent an EV without agreeing to purchase it after term completion or lease-purchase agreements.

Alternatively, you can avoid these costs by working with a traditional fleet management company (FMC) or an EV-specific solution provider, sometimes referred to as “Electrification-as-a-Service.” These services may cover the procurement as well as the ongoing maintenance of the vehicles and charging infrastructure for a single fee.

Have a strategy

Fleet electrification can seem like a daunting task at first glance, but all that is required is a solid strategy. The benefits of going electric far outweigh the initial hurdles and fleet managers should start researching the options available to them. 

Unlike ICE vehicles, EVs are not mandated to communicate information within industry standards. With new makes and models being added regularly, it is important that your telematics solution offers robust support for the EVs available today and future models.

Support applies to more than just the ability to acquire EV-specific performance data – there is an entire ecosystem with other partners that need to work together. Look for a solution that offers a Marketplace with charging equipment, smart-charging solutions, OEM integrations and more. 

When choosing your Telematics provider, there solution should include;

Range capability 

Determine which vehicles currently on the market

meet your fleet’s needs.

Note: This should be informed by real-world range

capabilities of EVs in the market today.

Charge viability 

Define where vehicles will be able

to charge based on dwell time and

likely state-of-charge (SOC).

Total cost of

ownership (TCO)

Create a more accurate representation of the true

cost of the EV over its lifespan, including savings

from reduced fuel and maintenance costs.

Note: You should have the ability to include

applicable rebates.

Projected carbon

emission reduction

Understand the potential environmental impact

by reviewing the estimated amount of avoided

CO2 emissions.

State-of-charge 

Monitor the amount of energy remaining in the EV’s

battery in real time. Represented as a percentage,

ideally reported at every 1% change.

Detailed live map view 

View the location of all fleet vehicles on a map,

with detailed information like EV SOC.

Electric energy economy 

Track performance and manage costs by

calculating the total electric energy consumed

over the total distance travelled.

Setting and implementing an electric fleet strategy has become a top priority for many organisations. While in many cases the business case is here today to make the switch, a wide-scale transition will take time. While taking early steps to electrify, addressing inefficiencies in the fleet today can make that EV transition smoother and more successful in the long run.

EVs are a big investment, so you should make sure you aren’t replacing underutilised or unoptimised vehicles with EVs. Even though emissions might be addressed, this fleet will likely still be incurring unnecessary costs and waste. Bringing in best management practices to optimise the fleet can make sure they're getting the most out of their assets, which will ultimately improve the business case for EVs.

If you have an unoptimised fleet before you go electric, you might be creating new issues on top of the ones you are carrying over. But an optimized fleet can further enhance all the benefits provided by EVs and truly transform your operations, which is why it should be the first step of your electric fleet strategy.

Rightsizing

Rightsizing is an important task for any fleet manager and it will be an important component of your electric fleet strategy. Currently, EVs have a higher acquisition cost than a comparable internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. That being said, under the right applications they can have a significantly lower TCO. This is a result of fuel cost savings and reduced maintenance. The way to achieve these benefits is to maximize their utilization– the more they are used, the greater the cost savings. 

You can use your telematics data to generate reports on asset utilisation to help identify your most and least utilised vehicles. The vehicles that drive the most kilometres may present the most opportunity for cost savings, especially if their daily driving distances still fall within the range capabilities of the available EVs. Replacing a low-use vehicle with an EV means you’re not getting full value out of that asset.

Alternatively, by reviewing the least utilised vehicles you might be able to eliminate assets from your fleet altogether. You might be able to combine tasks from multiple vehicles and essentially create a new high-utilization asset, which could be a prime candidate for electrification.

Another good practice is to check that you are assigning the most efficient vehicles to those higher utilisation roles. For ICE vehicles this will result in reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions and for EVs it's about increasing the TCO savings. 

The key takeaway is that EVs have the greatest value when they are used as much as practical. 

Another component of rightsizing is making sure you have the right type of vehicle assigned to each specific task. Does this assignment really require a large truck or would a smaller vehicle suffice? Procuring a like-for-like vehicle type without assessing the purpose or utility needs increases the chance of unnecessary costs and reduced profitability.

This becomes even more of a concern with EVs as their ROI is already tied more directly to their upfront cost and if you are making a business case for adding EVs, it is important to have accurate projections. 

By making sure you have the correct type of vehicles assigned to each task, you might find you have more potential opportunities for electrification that will meet your daily duty cycle needs while saving you money.    

Improve the efficiency of your current fleet

Finding ways to increase fleet efficiency is an ongoing task, but there are a few strategies that are particularly helpful for preparing for EVs. These tactics will not only help you once you have adopted EVs, but they will also help you reduce fuel and CO2 emissions in the meantime.

One strategy is to encourage your drivers to adopt the most fuel-efficient and eco-friendly practices while operating their vehicles. Excessive speeding and harsh breaking both contribute to a lower fuel economy, as well as decrease your fleet’s overall safety. You can avoid this by implementing driver scorecards or custom alerts. The improvements from these efforts will carry over once you have gone electric as speed plays an important role in getting the most range out of your EVs.

Optimising your routes

Another helpful strategy to explore is route optimisation. By always making sure you are taking the most effective routes possible, you can maximise the utilisation of your vehicles and get the most TCO savings out of your EVs. 

This may also be an important factor when rightsizing or considering electrification potential in general. Are there unnecessary routes being driven today? Are there currently trips that two vehicles are taking that could be combined into one? If you can combine or redirect routes, there may be an opportunity to reduce the total number of assets in your fleet. But note that this may increase the total daily driving distances for each vehicle, which could result in daily distances becoming out of EV range. This information is important to review when determining which vehicles in your fleet can go electric.

Start assessing EV suitability

The best way to understand your fleet’s electrification potential is to understand how your current vehicles are being used. This can be accurately reviewed from your telematics data via an EV Suitability Assessment (EVSA) to help identify which of your vehicles could be replaced with an EV alongside potential cost savings and avoided CO2 emissions.

Running an EVSA shouldn’t be a one-time exercise. In fact, conducting one whenever you are approaching the end of a vehicle's lifespan or lease period will ensure you are not missing an opportunity to electrify. This also allows you to begin piloting EVs to learn more about the day-to-day nuances early on before transitioning a larger proportion of your fleet to EVs. Finally, since it uses real-world data, including regional model availability along with fuel and energy prices, you can be assured that the recommendations are always current. 

Get started on your electric fleet strategy

Even if you aren’t quite ready to go electric just yet there are many things you can do to prepare. By optimising your operations, you can make sure that your fleet is in the best possible position to get the most out of your EVs when the time comes.