Our customer is a telecommunications company with more than 46 million broadband, mobile, phone and home subscribers. The company, having recently undergone a partnership which increased its vehicle fleet, has 4,000 home-based vehicles across the UK and has an ambition to begin electrifying their fleet quickly, while limiting capital expenditure costs.
LeasePlan provides vehicle leasing solutions to this customer and for fleets globally. In order to impress their customer, LeasePlan required an expert to provide analysis to help them begin planning the electrification of their customer’s fleet and chose Hitachi ZeroCarbon to deliver the EV Transition Strategy for their client.
Our solution
We undertook an analysis of the customer’s fleet and site data to provide LeasePlan with a data-driven optimal fleet electrification strategy and identify where chargers should be installed to satisfy the demand of their future EV fleet. This unique approach ensured a custom-fit solution based on the fleet’s demands and available resources, while remaining within the constraints of the business’ own strategy. We completed the project in two phases:
Phase 1: Charging vehicles at a customer site closest to driver’s home:
- We looked at drivers’ home locations and calculated the distance to all the customer sites to find how many vehicles were within a 10-mile radius.
- We then calculated the average energy demand for the fleet – finding they’d need ~27 kWh per vehicle day.
- Using the available headroom for all ~175 sites, we determined how many chargers could be installed at each location, and how much time vans would need to charge.
- Combining these datasets, plus car park space data and other potential EV charging site locations, we could determine how many chargers our customer would have to install to satisfy their fleet.
Phase 2: Charging vehicles at customer site closest to daily route:
- The analysis was expanded by using historical vehicle telematics data to determine the optimal charge location for each vehicle shift completed in a six-month period.
- The scenarios analysed reflected our customer’s electrification strategy with on-site charging, contracted demand, public charging and home charging options modelled.
- The team analysed 33 million rows of telematics data to provide the optimal charging strategy for each vehicle and found 90% of the fleet were within 2 miles and 80% were within 1 mile of a charging location.
Benefits delivered for the customer
We provided a comprehensive EV Transition Strategy to address the client’s challenges, which included assessing the feasibility and cost of various charging models, as well as analysing historical vehicles telematics data to identify the best way to electrify their fleet with the following outcomes:
- Roadmap to electrification identified the fastest route to electrify the fleet, which minimises cost and operational disruption. This provided the client with specific actions by year in order to meet targets.
- Optimal charging strategy developed an optimal charging strategy, considering the possible charge locations and current fleet operations. This charging strategy ensured an accelerated electrification would be possible.
- Identification of cost savings by utilising their partner charge point locations, we identified an opportunity for our client to minimise the CAPEX required for charge point infrastructure. On top of this, our team evaluated which types of chargers would be required and modelled their smart charging techniques to optimise charge points required.
- Accelerated electrification providing the EV Transition Strategy – a clear and actionable plan that supported our client to achieve an accelerated fleet electrification.
The customer was so impressed with the analysis our team provided, they advised their subcontractors to consider using our expertise to design their fleet transition. We are also in initial conversations to help them with the next stage that includes rolling out the charging infrastructure.