Often, in the event of a failed charge, it’s the driver that finds out first and delivers you the news. In fact, 55% of fleet managers recently surveyed by Fuuse confirmed this to be their reality. The charger status may have said ‘online’, but the charge didn’t work and no alerts raised the alarm. The result? A vehicle temporarily out of action, a derailed morning for you and your driver, and scheduling delays or disruption. It’s these situations that really highlight the difference between a charger showing as online, and the charge having actually worked.
When the EV charging industry talks about reliability purely in terms of uptime, we’re referring to charging performance in very generic terms that don’t tell the full story. A genuinely high percentage of uptime may be quoted, but what’s really being referenced is a network-health metric that is potentially not linked to what’s really going on.
Uptime confirms the charger is switched on and communicating; that’s basically it! And while, as a high-level performance metric, it’s useful to know - it falls short of providing real insight into whether a vehicle has actually charged efficiently. A charger can report 99%+ uptime and still regularly fail you because most of the issues that can stop a charger from working have little or nothing to do with the charger being online.
Take authorisation failures for example - these are relatively common and can happen even when the charger is perfectly healthy and connected. If an RFID card fails to authenticate or times out, the charge doesn’t work, but from the network’s perspective, nothing went wrong at all.
Another example involves the ‘handshake’ between the charger and the vehicle itself, which is separate to the charger’s connection to the back office. The two have to ‘agree’ on power levels before the session can start, and if that negotiation fails (regardless of where the fault lies), the charger remains online and the uptime stat is not affected.
There are other dynamics that may contribute to charging failure: power needs to be allocated efficiently for the charge to work, the charge card and payment terminal have to be operating correctly - and yet none of these things malfunctioning would affect the uptime statistic. That’s why for you as a fleet manager, there is a distinct difference between uptime and what is considered ‘successful charging’.
A site’s charging estate usually involves a few separate layers, the hardware, the back office or charge point management system (CPMS), and the network. Each logs their own version of events without owning the whole picture or taking full accountability. A typical scenario includes the hardware blaming the software and vice versa, it’s an industry wide pattern and one that you and many other fleet managers will be familiar with, but the consequences can hit hard. Dispatch delays, a driver stuck with no charge, admin time spent handling complaints, and the damage to credibility of both the EV rollout and its management. So how do you manage EV operations and avoid these issues? With a CPMS that understands there's more to EV charging than uptime.
At Fuuse, we hear fleet managers talk about their CPMS as ‘the nerve centre’ of EV charging operations. That means the system needs to go beyond just saying whether or not a charger is online, it also needs to say why a session has failed. This is so you can:
Fuuse enables real time alerts to be set up so that failed charges are flagged before a driver turns up to start their shift. This keeps you forewarned, ahead of the game, and in control. A history is also provided that gives the insight needed to spot patterns early, helping to catch charger failure before it actually happens.
When anything goes wrong in any operation, the kneejerk reaction is to apportion blame, or perhaps look to more uptime dashboards. With Fuuse that’s not necessary, because you have the visibility you need to see the root cause of the issue. This means you can shift the focus from finger-pointing to solving the problem and preventing it from happening again.
Knowing whether a charger will deliver reliably is a key fundamental consideration, but to really optimise operational efficiency, you need a view of where things stand on the vehicle status. State of charge data, for example, is essential information when you’re managing a fleet and need to know which vehicles need priority charging, while you’re also busy factoring in route planning and maintenance schedules.
WEbinar - from plan to performance: every vehicle out on time
Fuuse is teaming up with Volteum to deliver a webinar on what it actually takes to get every vehicle charged and ready to work. We'll look at the whole charging process, from deciding which vehicle charges first to ensuring the right amount of power goes to the right place.
Tuesday, 3rd November, 2pm - Register here
Volteum is a leading EV data platform that pulls vehicle mileage, faults, maintenance data, state of charge and costs into one view. Their electric fleet module can forecast each vehicle’s state of charge and range along planned routes so you can see in advance whether a vehicle will have enough charge for its next shift. It can also adjust charging schedules in line with how the day is progressing for each vehicle.
The webinar will explore why it takes a charger-side view using a powerful CPMS like Fuuse, as well as a vehicle-side view through a platform like Volteum, to get every vehicle out on time and ready to work.
In this session, you'll learn:
Why depot charging demand is outpacing what most sites were built for, and why simply adding more chargers isn't the answer.
What a charging shortfall really costs, and why every kWh your fleet picks up on public charging instead of at the depot adds up fast.
How to plan charging priority across a busy depot, so the right vehicles charge first when there isn't enough power for everyone at once.
What happens when a charger fails, and how to get a straight answer instead of hardware and back office each blaming the other.
How planning and delivery work together in practice: 100 vans back at 8pm with mixed charge levels, and every one of them out again by 6am.
You'll hear directly from both Fuuse and Volteum, plus there's a live Q&A to put your own depot's challenges to both teams.
More of your fleet is going electric, and depot charging demand is growing faster than most sites were ever designed for. Adding more chargers isn't a real fix, and every kWh your fleet picks up on public rapid charging instead of at the depot costs three to four times more. Join our webinar to see how, with the right technology, you can achieve smooth and seamless operational efficiency with your EV fleet.
The webinar will take place on Tuesday 3rd November - register here.