EV range anxiety is a major concern for electrifying fleets: Fleet managers need their EVs to have enough range to arrive at their destination on time, charging takes much longer than filling up on gas, and public chargers are notoriously unreliable. Running out of range could mean a vehicle is stranded and needs a tow.
Fleet managers know that manufacturer-reported vehicle range can widely differ from what actually happens in the field. Additionally, variables like load weight, regenerative braking, geographical terrain, and driver technique impact every route. For example, Consumer Reports found that driving in the cold and running the heater shortens an EV’s range between 25 and 50 percent.
From working closely with our customers, a few questions came up over and over again:
To answer these questions, fleet managers need to be able to see per-route and per-vehicle range estimates based on their real historical data.
Our customers have already been able to use the range report to make significant discoveries about their vehicles’ range. For example, a truck taking a mostly uphill route from a port to a warehouse inland had an equivalent range of 136 miles. However, when the same vehicle returned to the port on a mostly downhill route, it had an equivalent range of 262 miles. What caused the difference? Regenerative braking, which feeds energy back into the battery as an EV slows!
Here’s what the report looks like for a demo fleet. For each vehicle in your fleet, you can get a quick summary of historical estimated range, median estimated range, and total distance driven:
From here, you can select a specific vehicle and see its range for each route driven, based on route length, distance, and battery consumption:
From the vehicle report, you can go one step further to analyze the details of a specific route. You’ll see a timeline of the stops along the route, in addition to a map overlay.
We’re excited to continue developing our range reporting capabilities, such as adding the ability to automatically associate your vehicle’s load for a specific route. Interested in analyzing the range of your fleet EVs? Get in touch!
Flipturn is a leading charging management solution for fleets. Flipturn provides a comprehensive fleet solution that minimizes your utility costs with energy management, improves uptime and issue resolution speed, and provides powerful cost per mile and range insights.
