12 Questions Every Fleet Should Ask Itself in 2025
By Mike Nakrani, CEO
Are you smashing your New Year’s resolutions?! Let me offer an alternative …. 12 questions that will help every fleet embarking on the switch to electric vehicles – as well as those looking to consolidate and integrate existing electric depots.
We typically take our customers through three stages –
- Strategy & Plan
- Design & Build
- Power & Performance
And at each stage, we answer the questions that fleet owners typically ask us when we first meet, from “what should I be doing now?” to “how can I keep my fleet running during the build?”, “will I have enough power to charge my vehicles” and “will the business case stack up?”.
There are clearly financial considerations to be made up front to balance vehicle, infrastructure and power costs with the competitive advantages and operational cost savings inherent in an electric fleet when compared to diesel.
Once an electric fleet is live, there are cost savings to be made by optimising fleet operations to minimise power usage from the grid and maximise efficiency on the road. It’s about identifying and achieving marginal gains through intelligent analysis of the fleet’s data pulled from telematics, power sources and fleet operations. Our software platform VEV-IQ manages our customers’ fleets in real-time to do just that.
Power is the other major consideration. We recommend a micro-grid approach comprising solar, battery storage and the grid. Then we’ll design and build it and connect it up to the management platform, VEV-IQ, to do intelligent energy management.
On with the 12 questions ….
I hope some may provoke thought and be useful for that, to get you to electric sooner.
1 Who is responsible for fleet electrification in your business?
The Board will set the goals, but others must make it happen: fleet management, facilities, sustainability, procurement, finance – they’ll need co-ordination and support.
2 Do you have existing electric vehicles and or charging infrastructure that are not operating effectively as a network?
Some early EV adopter fleets are looking for consolidation to improve operations, efficiency and cost management. Ask us how we can integrate infrastructure under one management platform to create a network with consistent SLAs.
3 Have you assessed your fleet’s routes and distances for EVs?
Our modelling on real life use cases shows that EVs have more than adequate range for many fleets and it’s possible to make simple but clever operational changes to increase this. For example, using faster charging speeds, moving away from single phase charging, more real-time fleet interventions with better data.
4 Have you modelled your potential EV fleet infrastructure as a network or as individual depots?
We recommend taking a network view rather than looking depot by depot to reap economies of scale and efficiency in power usage and charging scheduling. You could substantially reduce grid upgrade requirements, for example, we modelled one national fleet down from 90% needing a grid upgrade to 8%.
5 Is your assumed power demand delaying your electrification plans?
Plan a microgrid for your electric depot using solar power and battery storage to minimise your national grid requirement. We modelled this for a fleet of >50 vehicles and allowed 30 vans to go electric when the grid connection would only support 11.
6 Do you have a plan to reduce your scope 3 emissions?
Your scope 3 is your responsibility but someone else’s scope 1. So if you’re the third-party logistics provider (3PL), you already have your customer asking you to electrify and should at a minimum be in planning mode or running pilots to confirm assumptions for roll out. Our consultancy service can help define a plan that you can take to your board for review and approval.
7 Have you planned your charging schedule to optimise your overnight energy tariff?
We calculated one fleet could switch 33% of vehicles to EV and save £330,000 / 10 years by installing higher-powered chargers to charge during the overnight energy tariff. Review your options for power supply – ask us to help with this.
8 Have you applied for and paid for your grid upgrade?
DNOs are removing what they term ‘zombie’ connection applications to prioritise real requirements first. We offer electrification consultancy and power requirement assessment to ensure the power requirements are rightsized for your fleet and facilitate grid upgrades.
9 Have you checked you’re not over-investing in your charging infrastructure?
We have seen up to 20% overspends. For one national fleet, we modelled chargers speed to match distance travelled and operational downtime. The projected grid requirements went from 10 MVA to 4 MVA. It’s critical that fleets secure the right amount of power. Our analysis shows that getting this wrong not only delays and compromises the transition but can add costs in the hundreds of thousands.
10 How intelligent is your smart energy management platform?
Small adjustments will reduce your peak demand – look at load management, TOU (time of use) tariffs, vehicle battery weights, payloads, driver training, charging scheduling – it’s all about marginal gains. We do this from our proprietary management platform, VEV-IQ.
11 Can you monitor your EV fleet in real-time?
EV fleets run on data and to achieve peak performance and resilience, you’ll need real-time monitoring. VEV-IQ will help you minimise downtime with proactive remote monitoring, timely alerts and rapid issue resolution.
12 How do electric vehicles improve driver satisfaction?
EVs enhance the driving (and passenger) experience because they’re quieter and smoother. EV depots are also clean and less cluttered Once drivers have driven an EV, they don’t want to go back to diesel.
If I’ve achieved my goal of making you stop and think – and perhaps ask more questions – I’d be happy to hear from you.