The popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) has grown so much in recent years that, for the first time, a fully electric automobile was the world’s top-selling car during the first quarter of 2023, just 15 years after the same manufacturer released its first electric vehicle. When it comes to the electrification of commercial fleets, however, real-world examples are just starting to emerge as the path toward implementation becomes clearer.
One of the biggest roadblocks that the industry is tackling right now is charging infrastructure. While personal electric vehicles can be charged by plugging a car into an outlet at home or at a public charging station, commercial electric vehicles need access to more robust charging capabilities. Today, this means businesses must develop and operate their own charging infrastructure for their fleets.
Charging infrastructure comes with its own set of obstacles and considerations, particularly around issues like cost and timeline to implementation.
While EVs promise less maintenance and lower fuel costs over time, saving the vehicle owner money in the long run, the upfront capital expense and complexity of EV adoption and installing charging infrastructure can deter businesses from taking that next step toward electrification.
“Fleet managers face risk and uncertainty around the financial model of electric vehicles. There are still open questions such as: How long will these vehicles and charging stations last? What risk are you putting into your operations if you go in this direction?” said Scott Fisher, senior vice president at Voltera.
These questions are valid and companies must answer them if they are to move forward with fleet electrification. This is why Voltera is partnering with fleets to help remove barriers to electrification surrounding charging. It provides the financial upfront resources and experience to help fleets develop and operate fleet charging infrastructure for their organizations and has helped deploy over 1,000 charging sites.
“The Voltera story is really about reducing the risk of fleet providers on the charging side. And, of course, there’s still risk on the vehicle side. But what we’re trying to do is take that charging risk off the table by having purpose-built sites, having uptime guarantee and putting a lot of attention into making those sites exactly what the fleet wants from an operational perspective,” Fisher said.
Voltera doesn’t shy away from the fact that, as the capabilities are today, not all businesses will see a payback from electrification. The number one way that its sites are economically useful to clients is when fleets operate at scale.
“If you’re only driving 20 miles a day and only need to charge a little bit, you won’t get the payback from the fact that electricity costs are lower than diesel,” Fisher explained. “If you can use a site a lot and amortize the upfront cost of building a charging site through utilization, your effective cents per kilowatt hour price is going to be lower.”
Voltera’s equity backing from EQT makes it possible to provide upfront capital to acquire, build, own and operate charging infrastructure to help fleets on their electrification journeys. This allows Voltera to reduce risk for its clients by bearing overrun costs instead of the fleet.
Charging sites built for one company aren’t the only option, though. Voltera is working on creating charging sites for not just one fleet customer but several customers so that no one business has complete responsibility for providing all the utilization needed to make a site economical.
To reduce costs, Voltera is also mindful of the benefits that vary by location, such as California, where there are strong incentives for electrification, and states like Texas and Georgia, where the permitting timeline is shorter and electricity costs are lower.
Long lead times to deployment are another concern for fleets. Fisher said that the timeline for implementation may take up to two years due to the elements at play, such as working with utility companies to coordinate bringing power to the site and receiving proper zoning authority. Voltera offers sites that are already in the development process to offset the number of months fleets will need to wait until implementation.
“Voltera is focused right now on building sites on time, on budget, that fleets can use to start the scale-up of their electrification program. We’ll always be focused on that. Where the industry is going to go over time as more and more of these charging sites get developed by companies like us and others is increasingly focused on that total cost of ownership and making sure that the cost of electrification is indeed better than an alternative,” Fisher said.
Click here to learn more about Voltera.
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