Electric Vehicle Fleet

An electric vehicle fleet is a company fleet made up wholly or partly of battery electric vehicles. Running it keeps the basics of any fleet (contracts, servicing, drivers, costs) and adds four daily topics: where and when vehicles charge, their state of charge, the health of their batteries and assigning each vehicle to trips its range can cover.

What changes compared with a combustion fleet

With petrol or diesel, refuelling takes minutes and costs flow through a fuel card. With electric vehicles, energy is managed over time and across places: a vehicle may charge at the depot overnight, at the driver's home or on a public network, each at a different price. The battery, the most expensive component, becomes an asset to watch throughout the holding period. Day-to-day operations therefore depend on data that a combustion fleet never needed.

The four operational topics

• Charging: making sure every vehicle has a place and a time to charge, and keeping costs visible. This is the job of charging management.
• State of charge: knowing before each mission whether a vehicle has enough energy for the planned route, and spotting vehicles that were not plugged in.
• Battery health: following the loss of capacity over time, which affects real range and resale value. The battery life of an electric car article explains what influences it.
• Assignment: giving long trips to vehicles with the right range, and keeping combustion or hybrid vehicles for uses that still require them.

Daily practices that work

• Plug in by default: vehicles that return to a site are connected every evening, even when the battery is not low.
• Check readiness in the morning: a short list of vehicles with low charge or no session overnight avoids missed departures.
• Compare cost per kilometre by powertrain, using real charging records rather than estimates.
• Train drivers on eco-driving for electric vehicles, including regenerative braking and cabin heating habits, which have a visible effect on range.

How Dadycar helps

Dadycar is a French fleet management software that handles electric vehicles in the same tool as the rest of the fleet. The EV optimization module shows each connected vehicle's status (charging, charge complete, low charge, not charging), triggers an alert below a range threshold you set, records every charging session with its cost per kWh and maps your charging locations. Telematics works without a box on compatible connected vehicles, with a box as an option. Data is hosted in France with OVHcloud.

FAQ

Is an electric fleet harder to manage than a combustion fleet?
It adds new data to follow, mainly charging and state of charge. With that data centralised, daily management stays simple.

How do you avoid a vehicle being empty in the morning?
By checking state of charge and overnight sessions every morning, and alerting on vehicles below a set range.

Can electric and combustion vehicles be managed together?
Yes. Most fleets are mixed, and managing them in one tool makes cost comparisons by powertrain possible.