Are Telematics the key enabler for fleet electrification?

 We are moving to a connected vehicle world, where real time vehicle operating data can be uploaded and analyzed in the cloud, and systems upgrades and driving notifications downloaded from the cloud to the vehicle.   This will open up a whole range of service opportunities and not surprisingly is the key growth area within the automotive industry.

But what can connectivity do for fleet electrification?   Sure, for vehicles using public charging facilities, connectivity can find the station, manage the transaction and even reserve places to charge if this becomes necessary.   However for fleets, there can be far more benefits from how telematics can provide detail operating information and system status for their vehicles.    One key advantage for electric vehicles will be the ability to understand the state of health (% life expended and current available range) for the vehicle batteries.   Knowing the current available range is beneficial in managing real world conditions since the energy usage of the vehicle will depend on factors such as weather conditions, time of day (use of heating/cooling, lighting, wipers), number of hills to climb, traffic etc.  Determining the available range as the vehicle ages is complicated by the available energy in the battery reducing with time depending on factors such as energy used each day, battery operating and storage temperatures, and power used to charge the vehicle.  If fleets make conservative assumptions on the available range as the vehicle ages, then vehicles will become overly restricted to certain low energy usage routes, and the number of routes possible with the electric vehicles will reduce with time as the vehicles age.  This may be manageable for fleets with fixed routes,  but could become a significant challenge for fleets with dynamic routes. 

 Some of the fleet vehicles are likely to experience less capacity depreciation than others if they are being used on routes with lower energy uses and/or charged more conservatively.  Over time, a fleet of vehicles will have a mix of different available ranges depending on age and how the vehicles have been used.   This will lead to benefits through smart management of the electric fleet vehicles.

Enter telematics – if the available range of the battery is known, then fleets can optimize the vehicle matching to routes.  This could ensure older vehicles have sufficient range for a selected route, and also enable vehicles with aged batteries to be deployed on routes using less energy as a means to extend the effective life of the batteries.  There is then an opportunity to balance the battery aging across the fleet and could lead to fleets being confident in retaining electric vehicles for longer and/or receiving a higher residual value when the vehicles are sold.   

An example is illustrated in the figure below, which shows the potential variation in battery state of health  (SOH, which in this case is % of life expended) for 10 electric trucks in a fleet.  The vehicles are assumed to have a range of 100 miles and are used on the same routes each day.  These routes vary from 40 to 90 miles with an average of 66 miles.

In this scenario after a set number of years, the trucks doing the longer routes will start to approach their end of life, while on the shorter routes the vehicles may have more than half their life remaining.   If the trucks were regularly switched between the routes, each truck would have used 63% of its life.   An alternative to balancing the battery aging, would be for the fleets to keep the trucks designated to specific routes, and use the SOH information to determine when to remove trucks from service, rather than just replacing after a prior determined time period.

Cloud processing can also be applied to the daily operational data to provide a more detailed assessment of the complete fleet performance and current health status of the vehicles.  This could allow alerts to be sent to the fleet manager and the driver when planned vehicle operations may not be achievable due to inclement weather, traffic issues or maintenance.   This processing could  be very powerful in helping fleets with dynamic route schedules to plan their operations.  Cloud processing has the advantage that it can take into account the history of fleet vehicle performance to provide intelligence to optimize future vehicle operations.

There is clearly significant benefit to fleet operations from telematics in general and specifically for battery pack systems.   Even though the management of battery SOH is just one aspect of telematics,  it will be key to gaining confidence in battery life expectations and hence improving the business case for electric truck deployments.