By now you will most likely have read articles talking about how the largest fleets in the US are significantly increasing their adoption of electric vehicles. However, you may be wondering why these companies seem in such a rush to electrify their fleet. This blog is part of a 5 series article covering some of the top benefits of electrifying your fleet.
A recent survey of 300 fleet managers in the US indicated that 90% of fleet managers believe electric vehicles are inevitable. It seems that we all agree that electric vehicles are coming, but why is adoption growing so quickly and what how are the top fleet managers benefiting from fleet electrification?
Fleet Economics
Fleet managers who operate electric vehicles gain several economic advantages over those who only operate gas powered vehicles. Fleet electric vehicles can cost less than 50% to fuel compared to similar gas cars, they are also cheaper to maintain, and less likely to break down because they are more efficient than gas cars.
Top Strategies for Electric Fleets
When fleet owners and fleet managers think of electrifying operations, the first thing intuitively comes to mind is -
“What vehicles are we going to buy”?
“What is the range”?
“Will these vehicles perform well in my operations”?
As a second order of business come the questions -
“How do we charge the vehicles”?
“What chargers come with the vehicles”?
“How long would it take to charge the vehicles and what charger do I need”?
That being said, we’re here to let you in on a secret: fleet owners with experience in electrification know that the fuel savings they get from electric vehicles (driving on electricity can be 2-4 times cheaper than driving on gas) is only a tip of the Iceberg when it comes to the amount of financial benefits they can extract from their electric fleet.
Let’s discuss 4 strategies on saving money and creating revenue using the benefits of fleet electrification.
🚀#1 Off-peak charging as a default. Reliable off-peak charging can save up to multiple times the amount of money that would be spent versus the charge-as-needed approach. Epic Charging enables off-peak charging with literally a 1 button click.
Example:
Epic’s fleet customer charging facility is serviced by South California Edison (SCE). Super off peak energy cost is $0.13/kW, on peak energy cost is $0.46/kW. According to Epic’s monitoring dashboard
off-peak charging time is 86% with an average cost of $0.18/kW. If we assume 50% off peak for the charge-as-needed approach, we would have $0.295/kW as the average cost of energy. In this case the fleet is saving at least 60% of energy cost by switching to off-peak charging with Epic.
🚀#2 Earn money out of carbon incentives. If you own a charger, all the energy spent for transportation can be claimed in Low Carbon Fuel Standard Credits (LCFS), with a typical truck generating ~$2,000 of value per year. Epic Charging takes care of credit creation and monetization for our customers. The software creates automated energy usage reports for your own reporting, or can even take care of it for you in “autopilot” mode to monetize credits and deposit funds quarterly.
Example:
A small fleet operating four chargers of 48 amp (11.5 kW) AC, 5 chargers of 80 amp (19.2kW) both operating 6hrs / day (25% of time). In addition, the fleet operates an emergency DC 120kW charger operated 10% of the time. During the year, the fleet would use around 170MW of energy and generate around 170 LCFS credits (exact number would depend on the exact electricity source). That would generate around $11K of additional revenue at $65/credit and $20K if credit price rices to $120 /credit.
🚀#3 Savings on route optimization and predictive maintenance. The next level of savings is generated from route optimization and predictive maintenance. Calculate energy use, predict charging needs and optimize your routes.
Epic Charging opens up this data to fleet managers. Clear energy usage in mi/kWh and ultimately in $/mi.
Example:
A well known fact that charging the battery to a maximum of 90% will save battery life. According to battery manufacturers, proper charging regime may extend battery life 20%. If we assume battery life for a medium duty vehicle - 10 year, properly charging and maintaining the battery would extend the service life to 12 years, therefore reducing the cost of battery ownership 20% compared to charging the battery to 100% every time.
🚀#4 Earn money through grid services. Top fleet managers generate revenue simply by not charging vehicles during periods of peak demand on the power grid.
In partnership with Leap, Epic enables its customers to integrate their fleets into electricity markets and participate in demand response and other grid services programs that offer incentives for curtailing non-essential energy usage when the grid is strained. You can learn more on how grid incentives work at leap.energy.
About EPIC Charging
EPIC charging was launched by energy and electric vehicle industry veterans who realized there was an opportunity to offer charger agnostic, user friendly software to help fleet managers make more money and cut their costs. The EpicCharging software platform allows fleet managers to integrate EV chargers from multiple vendors and provides best-in-class features for fleet owners to sell LCFS credits, optimize electric vehicle charging, track driving and maintenance, and earn money providing grid services.
We believe that for many EV fleet owners, the electrification journey starts with installing charging stations, but it improves by providing a platform that integrates the top fleet electrification services. Contact one of our experts to day to learn more about our electric hardware and software solutions.
Reserve your Epic Charging demo today