Electric Vehicles

An electric fleet asks different questions of telematics, and most of what a diesel fleet monitors becomes irrelevant.

What stops mattering

Fuel consumption as such.

Engine hours and oil intervals.

Emissions-related fault codes, which are a large share of diesel codes.

Idling, in the fuel sense — an electric vehicle stationary with the heater on uses energy, which is a different and smaller problem.

What starts mattering

State of charge, continuously, because a vehicle that will not complete its round is an operational failure rather than an inconvenience.

Energy consumption per distance, which varies far more with temperature, load and terrain than fuel does.

Charging: where, when, how fast, and at what tariff.

Battery state of health, which determines both usable range and residual value.

Preconditioning, which affects both range and depot power draw.

The range question, honestly

Advertised range assumes conditions your fleet does not operate in.

Cold weather, a full load and motorway speed can remove a third, and the three together more.

Which means the planning figure is the worst case for that round, not the average, and a fleet that plans on average range discovers this in January.

Measure your own consumption per distance, by season, before assigning vehicles to rounds.

Depot charging

The constraint most fleets underestimate.

Total site power limits how many vehicles can charge simultaneously, and upgrading a supply is a long lead time and a substantial cost.

Which makes charge scheduling an operational system rather than a convenience: which vehicle charges when, at what rate, to what level.

And it interacts with tariffs, where charging in the cheap window is a large share of the running cost advantage.

Battery health

Degrades with cycles, with fast charging, and with being held at high state of charge.

Reported by most vehicles and readable through telematics.

It determines residual value, which is the largest uncertainty in an electric fleet's whole-life cost.

Track it per vehicle from the start, because the trend matters and a single reading at disposal tells you nothing.

What to specify

Does the telematics read state of charge, state of health and charging status, or only position?

Can it integrate with the charging infrastructure, so scheduling is possible?

Many products added electric support late and read less than they appear to. Ask for the field list.

Track battery health from day one

Because the trend matters and a single reading tells you nothing.

State of health degrades with cycles, with fast charging and with sitting at high charge.

It determines usable range and residual value, which are the two uncertainties in an electric fleet's economics.

Read it monthly per vehicle and keep the series, which costs nothing and is the only way to know whether a charging policy is helping.

Follow the difficult record

Use see this technical-team use case to frame one representative case. The useful evidence is the record created when a value is corrected, approved and exported.

Independent reference

For a thematic point of reference, see the U.S. Department of Energy. Its current material provides useful context beyond product documentation.