Both the diesel vehicle sales bans and the zero-emission vehicle mandate will make fleet decarbonisation an imperative for fleet managers. Additionally, corporate net zero targets, potential TCO gains, and local city access legislation all create pressure to move faster than national legislation.
Practical availability of zero tail-pipe emission options is limited to hydrogen and electric powertrains. Production economics of both vehicles and fuel means that most fleets are going to be operating significant numbers of electric vehicles (EVs).
When considering integrating EVs into fleets, businesses face a common set of challenges around:
- Increased capital investment – in both more expensive vehicles and charging infrastructure.
- Vehicle capabilities – regarding payload and range.
- Power and infrastructure – relating to cost and availability of public charging infrastructure as well as the challenges of getting power into depots.
- Increased complexity – EV solutions are necessarily mixed and need to consider depot and on route charging, diesel and EVs from similar sites, and mixed energy sources, adding to the complications fleet managers need to address.
It is also important to note that fleets are part of wider supply chain and service delivery mechanisms so that poor planning choices or inefficient processes can have consequences that reach far beyond the vehicles being operated.
Additionally, fleets are part of a digital ecosystem that manages these service delivery and supply chain processes. This ecosystem can be at odds with the car derived software solutions being offered to fleets by much of the EV industry.
The result of all of this is a complex and risky environment that many fleet managers are struggling to navigate.
At FPS we have seen many of these challenges resolved by fleets who take an integrated approach to the problem by deploying digital platforms just like they would for other parts of their business. Our digital e-fleet and charger management platforms have successfully been applied to electric van, truck, and transport refrigeration unit fleets. These platforms aggregate data from vehicles, chargers, buildings, and operational systems and use the resulting data lake to support:
- Automated vehicle and charger management tasks and reporting
- Optimisation of vehicle to route, vehicle to charger, and charging profiles
- Improvement through a powerful structured data set that is available to stakeholders in the formats they need.
With aggregated data, businesses can make decisions that optimise EV integration and operations without over specified vehicles and infrastructure. With this approach, there is potential to reduce roll-out time and make huge financial savings whilst reducing emissions to comply with corporate and legislative targets.
To learn more, visit: https://www.flexpowersystems.com
