4 minutes

Dennis Katsnelson

Fleet charging infrastructure partner works with companies to save them money and shorten their timelines for electrification

Just 15 years after the same manufacturer introduced its first electric vehicle, the popularity of electric cars (EVs) has increased to the point that, in the first quarter of 2023, a fully electric automobile became the world's best-selling car for the first time. However, as the route toward implementation becomes clearer, real-world instances of the electrification of business fleets are only beginning to surface.

Over the past ten years, the use of electric cars has increased significantly, and there is no indication that this trend will slow down

According to a White House briefing, there are already 135,000 public EV chargers and almost 3 million electric vehicles on American roads. Consumer demand is anticipated to remain robust over the next ten years because of factors including cost reductions, increased car options, greater battery capacity, and environmental concerns. Almost one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States are produced by the transportation sector. Two-thirds of the emissions from transportation come from medium- and heavy-duty trucks.

Infrastructure for charging is one of the main obstacles that the industry is now working to overcome. Commercial electric vehicles require access to more powerful charging facilities, whereas personal electric vehicles may be charged by simply plugging their cars into an outlet at home or at a public charging station. This implies that companies now have to create and manage their own fleet charging infrastructure.

There are unique challenges and factors to be taken into account while implementing charging infrastructure, especially in relation to costs and construction schedules.

Businesses may be discouraged from making the transition to electrification by the upfront capital expenditures, complexity of EV adoption, and need to establish infrastructure for charging EVs, even if EVs are expected to require less maintenance and fuel over time, saving the owner of the vehicle money.

Fleet managers must deal with risk and uncertainty related to the electric car business model. There are still unanswered concerns, including how long these cars and charging stations will survive. If you proceed in this manner, what risk are you taking on for your business operations? stated Voltera senior vice president Scott Fisher.

If businesses want to proceed with fleet electrification, they need to provide answers to these legitimate issues. For this reason, Voltera is working with fleets to assist in removing obstacles related to charging in the electrification process. It has assisted in the deployment of over 1,000 charging stations and offers fleets the upfront funding and operational knowledge necessary to build and manage fleet charging infrastructure for their businesses.

The main goal of the Voltera narrative is to lower fleet providers' risk associated with charging. Naturally, there is still a danger associated with the vehicle. However, by having purpose-built sites, offering an uptime guarantee, and paying close attention to making those sites precisely what the fleet wants from an operational standpoint, we're aiming to remove that charging risk from the equation, Fisher explained.

Voltera doesn't hide from the reality that not all firms will benefit from electrification given current capabilities. When fleets operate at scale, this is the main way that their locations are beneficial to clients economically. Fisher said, "You won't get the payback from the fact that electricity costs are lower than diesel if you're only driving 20 miles a day and only need to charge a little bit." "Your effective cents per kilowatt hour price will be lower if you can utilize a site extensively and amortize the upfront cost of building a charging site through utilization."

With EQT's equity support, Voltera is able to finance the initial costs of purchasing, developing, owning, and running charging infrastructure to support fleets as they electrify. As a result, Voltera can lower the risk for its clients by taking on excess expenses rather than the fleet.

However, charging stations designed for a single business are not the only choice. Voltera is in the process of developing charging stations for several fleet clients, rather than just one so that no single company has the whole burden of supplying all the usage required to render a site profitable.

Voltera also considers location-specific benefits, such as those in California, which offers significant incentives for electrification, and in Texas and Georgia, where permits are obtained more quickly and power is less expensive, in an effort to keep prices down. Fleet managers are also concerned about long lead times for deployment. According to Fisher, the factors at play, such as coordinating the delivery of electricity to the site with utility providers and obtaining the necessary zoning authorization, could cause the implementation timeframe to extend up to two years. To counteract the month's fleets will have to wait until implementation, Voltera provides locations that are now under development.

At the moment, Volkswagen is concentrating on constructing facilities that fleets can utilize to begin ramping up its electrification initiative on schedule and under budget. That will always be our main concern. As more and more of these charging stations are built by businesses like ours and others, the industry's future direction will become more and more concentrated on the total cost of ownership and ensuring that the cost of electrification is, in fact, less expensive than an alternative, according to Fisher.