February 11, 2022

Increase Driver Productivity During Commercial Fleet Electrification

4 Min. Read

Fleet electrification is a crucial step towards eliminating carbon emissions. However, benefits don’t stop there. This investment is an opportunity to rethink your fleet management process.

You can improve productivity and safety by adopting new best practices and tools. From vehicle monitoring to mileage optimization, your transition to electrification can help cut costs and improve performance in key areas.

How at-home electrification results in higher profitability and driver productivity

With at-home charging, drivers can adopt a new routine where they leave directly from home in the morning and head back home.

Simpler routes

With gas-powered vehicles, some drivers use their personal vehicle to head to a facility in the morning. They will then pick up their delivery vehicle for the day. Next, they might head to a nearby gas station.

You can eliminate the commute to and from the central facility by letting drivers take their electric vehicle (EV) home. It’s something that can improve work-life balance and eliminate potentially stressful commute for drivers. As a result, you might see job satisfaction increase and face fewer costs linked to turnover for your fleet.

Another advantage is that having drivers leave directly from their home improves coverage for your fleet. Instead of having every driver leave from a central facility, you can dispatch the driver who lives closest to a destination to reduce driving time and energy consumption.

Compliance and optimization

Electrification is an opportunity to upgrade your fleet management process. You could adopt a new driver tracking solution. Modern driver tracking tools come with features such as energy and mileage reports.

Having access to driving data helps with compliance. You can automate things like reporting hours-of-service to meet federal transportation requirements or track mileage with precision for reporting to the IRS. Besides, using a tech platform to log this data is a more efficient alternative to manual reporting, which can be time-consuming and result in human errors.

You can also leverage this data to optimize your routes. Accessing charging status remotely, seeing how much of a charge an EV has, and what kind of range drivers typically get will help you plan routes more effectively.

Plus, energy and mileage reports will give you a more precise idea of how much of a charge an EV needs to complete its daily route. You can have drivers schedule charging to start and stop automatically to achieve the ideal charge. And with innovations like bidirectional charging, you will be able to give back unused electricity to get a credit and reduce costs.

Driver training

Electrification is a major change, and you’ll get better results if you provide driver training. It’s important for drivers to becoming familiar with at-home charging.

Driving an EV can also feel different, and drivers will need to adopt new practices. For instance, it’s possible to extend the range of an EV by learning to conserve momentum, limit harsh braking and avoiding passing other vehicles.

Reducing the complexity of at-home charging for drivers

A potential obstacle to electrification is the fact that drivers will have to get used to a new way of doing things. Managing at-home charging can be challenging, especially for those who aren’t familiar with EVs.

Building a streamlined charging process

You can help drivers adjust to electrification by developing a streamlined process for charging their EV. Investing in a network of at-home chargers for your drivers is a significant step toward this goal. With these at-home stations, charging is always available. Besides, it’s easy for drivers to adopt a routine where they plug in their EV overnight.

Potential obstacles

Building a network for at-home charging requires a strategic approach. You will have to consider where drivers live and how you will dispatch installers to their homes.

Because each home is unique, you will likely run into additional challenges, such as obtaining authorization from a landlord to install a charging station, finding the best spot for charging in multi-unit homes or planning for electrical system upgrades in older homes. There might be additional requirements to meet with different local building and electrical codes.

It’s also important to choose the right installers. You should vet the installers you work with and look at the maintenance contract.

How Qmerit can simplify at-home charging installation

The Qmerit Charge@Home™ for Fleets program makes electrification a stress-free process. We offer a turnkey solution for installing @Home EV charging stations via our network of vetted and licensed installers. We also use a proprietary platform to manage the different configurations our installers encounter and to access installer feedback.

As a result, drivers can focus on getting used to driving an EV and on performing their job to the best of their ability. And with Qmerit taking care of the installation process, you’re free to focus on optimizing fleet management and route planning to boost productivity while reducing your carbon footprint.

Contact us to learn more about the Qmerit Charge@Home™ for Fleets program!