How to recharge an electric fleet effectively

Switching to an electric fleet can bring significant savings to a company, while also lowering the greenhouse gas emissions. And the best way to keep your electric vehicles charged is to have your own charging points. OlifeEnergy offers a wide range of solutions for companies of all sizes – from Wallboxes and charging stations to energy and charging management systems.

There are several reasons to install your own charging station(s) when running an electric fleet of company cars. First of them is the certainty that your charging points will be available, unlike public chargers that can be occupied when you or your employees need them the most. The second and almost as important is the cost of charging. Using your own chargers enables you make use of the cheap electric energy from the grid, or even your own sources, like solar panels. And third, when you add smart management system and software into the mix, it’s easy to keep perfect track of charging and consumption of the whole fleet.

 

Which charger(s) do we need?

 

The road towards the smooth and effective charging of your company fleet starts with picking the right charging stations for you. Small firms can benefit from the Wallbox or Doublebox chargers, which are affordable and easily fitted to a wall or post. Both devices use alternating current (AC), limiting them to 22 kW – in case of dual-port Doublebox, this power can be either directed to one charging port or split evenly between both of them. Smart versions are also available, adding advanced features including the possibility to turn them into a public charging point.

For the free-standing charging points and especially for cases where sleek, futuristic looks are of advantage, like places where charging is also offered to customers, the same functionalities are available in the form of OlifeEnergy AC charger.

OlifeEnergy Doubleboxes recharging Moneta Bank's fleet of electric VW eGolfs.

The same design is also offered in the form of OlifeEnergy DC charger, which takes charging to another level using direct current technology. The available speeds start at 25 kW and continue in 25 kW increments up to 150 kW, the equivalent of the current-generation Tesla Superchargers. This means that typical electric car can be charged from almost zero to 80 % capacity in roughly half an hour. This is especially useful for public charging stations, but may also be of great benefit for the company fleet. For example, a delivery driver can come to the company HQ for lunch and while he eats, his van recharges enough to get through the afternoon shift.

Smart management

Having a place to charge is important, but it’s not everything. Especially in case of larger companies with more cars, it’s important to keep track of charging and consumption. Knowing what car charged when and how much is the minimum. It’s also useful to be able to track the charging by the department, or give various departments or employees (or cars) access to different chargers in your company’s ecosystem, or to give some of them higher priority. This may come handy if some cars need to do a lot of driving, while others are used less intensively and can go without a full charge. Also, if you allow employees to use company cars for private purposes, it’s good to watch their consumption and be able to charge them for their private trips, if you decide to do so.

OlifeEnergy Cloud will offer you all of this and more. In an easy to use app, you can track all the important data about your company’s charging system and its use, add or remove access to different chargers, set priorities for different cars, employees or departments (for example, delivery vans may have higher priority than the car that’s used for short trips around town) and do it all from wherever in the world you like.

Public charging

OlifeEnergy DC Charger in front of CarTec BMW dealership.

When you have a great charging system for your company cars, why not share it with your customers, clients, business partners or even just regular public? The Smart versions of the Wallbox and Doublebox chargers, as well as AC and DC chargers in all versions, can be connected to the public charging networks compatible with the standardized OCPP protocol. We can design and build a network, or you can connect into our OlifeEnergy.Net, which includes a mobile app that not only lets customers find a charging point, but also authorizes the charging and provides a payment method.

If you use OlifeEnergy.Net, it’s up to you to set a price for charging and you only pay us a fixed monthly fee for processing – the charging payments are transferred to you without and deductions. You can offer all of your charging points to public, or just some of them, and you can change these settings at any time using OlifeEnergy Cloud.

A tailor-made solution

Each company is different. A small business may be fine with just a Wallbox or Doublebox, while larger companies may benefit from more complicated systems, using various types of chargers. A typical example is placing several Wallbox or Doublebox chargers to the garage or parking lot, to recharge your cars overnight. Then, one or more DC chargers are placed to prominent parking spots. Those can be used by your guests, or by company cars that need to be charged quickly and back on the road. With the sleek, elegant design of our chargers, they will also symbolize the futuristic approach of your company.

For all kinds of customers, the power management services may be useful, preventing the need to pay for too much reserved power from the grid or being fined for overshooting the quarter-hour capacities.

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