Strategic initiatives, such as fleet electrification, have become important to commercial sustainability programs required to meet the stakeholders’ expectations, including regulators, investors, customers, and employees.

These groups of stakeholders often look for evidence, which the institutions and companies they work with live up to the range of claims and carbon reduction they make when it comes to their marketing.

Business organizations, including Orange, Amazon, Nestle, PepsiCo, and Loblaw, have already committed to zero carbon emissions. For that reason, organizations need to start taking action on strategies such as EV fleet management.

What EV Fleet Management Is

Management of an EV fleet refers to the process of managing many commercial electric cars. This can be anything from corporate vehicles to car rental companies and delivery service vehicles.

According to experts at REE Auto, the goal of managing vehicle fleets is to oversee vehicle fleets as well as assess behavior and performance. Management of fleet helps companies reduce costs, increase productivity, and ensure compliance.

What Are the Challenges of Fleet Management?

Although EVs have already started to make their way to the fleet sector and are dramatically leading managers to sustainability, they pose challenges to drivers and managers alike.

Among the greatest challenges facing the industry is overcoming charging investment and anxiety. Determining the distance you will cover before you charge your electric vehicle can be a great challenge, considering the factors affecting driving range, like weight, wind resistance, and temperature.

In addition, charger locations remain inaccessible in suburbs, rural areas, and along some highways. Most chargers are found in city or high-density areas. This, in turn, increases anxiety for drivers who need to make long-haul trips across state lines and different terrains. Apart from these, other challenges are:

• Short supply of electric trucks
• Load capacity
• High upfront costs
• More red tape, regulations, and permits

What is the Solution?

Before creating any business case, you should know what sustainable fleet strategies are and their outcome. Generally, they can be pinned down into two major objectives: improving operational efficiency and reducing emissions of carbon. These goals are usually intertwined and work hand-in-hand to make your commercial fleet more sustainable.

For instance, by changing some of your commercial vehicles to EVs, you will reduce fossil usage and tailpipe emissions while saving cash since electric cars have a lower TCO (total cost of ownership).

Importance of EV Fleet Management

For the potential benefits electric cars afford fleets, you should note that the management of the EV fleet is slightly different from that of the ICE fleet. While you still need to collect the same data as you would for the ICE fleet, you must account for routing, EV storage, workload, and charging schedules.

But generally, EV fleet management is cheaper than traditional gasoline cars. That is because they don’t have fuel costs and require less maintenance.

The Bottom Line

EV fleet management is dramatically changing to incorporate precision tracking, maintenance, safety, and spanning blockchain. In general, these solutions address growing demands for transportation, drivers’ welfare, and the current impact on the environment.