EV Fleet Management and GPS Tracking: Battery, Charge and Range
Electric vehicles have gone from being a pilot to now being in working fleets with delivery vans, light service trucks, municipal vehicles and, now, regional trucks. As soon as a fleet adds its first EV to its fleet, a hole is exposed in the telematics stack: GPS might tell you where and how your vehicle is driven, but it doesn’t tell you anything about the one thing which determines whether an EV completes its journey — the battery.
This guide discusses how EV fleet management and GPS tracking work together: what will GPS continue to provide for an electric fleet, what additional data layers electrification brings, and how battery state of charge, battery health, EV charging and range planning are complementary rather than a replacement to GPS. It has been written for the purpose of informing you of what platform is best for you and what questions you should be asking vendors, and not for the purpose of buying a specific number.
What is EV fleet management, and how does GPS tracking fit in?
EV fleet management is the management of EVs across four data layers: where is the vehicle and how is it moving (using GPS); what is the state of charge of the battery and how much range is left (from the energy state of the vehicle); the health of the battery over time; and where, how, and when the vehicle is charging. All the other three rely on the GPS tracking as the baseline, and GPS tracking provides the first layer, which is derived from the vehicle, not the generic GPS tracker.
That’s the one thing you need to know before purchasing. GPS provides you with position, speed, ignition, idling and route history data just as it does for a diesel fleet. A fleet platform receives information on battery state of charge, battery health and charging status from a tracker compatible with EVs and connected to the vehicle’s data bus, from the vehicle manufacturer’s telematics API, or from a connected charging network’s data feed. If a platform is only equipped with a location fix, then it is not a battery platform, and it is not “EV fleet management”, but rather GPS tracking plus at least one battery or charging data source.
These three data sources are not interchangeable, they deliver different results and different coverage and setup. It’s important to be aware of the one that a platform uses before committing:
| Data source | What it provides | Coverage | Depends on |
| EV-compatible GPS tracker | Location plus battery data read from the vehicle’s data bus | Travels with the vehicle anywhere | A device that supports your specific vehicle models |
| OEM telematics API | Battery and charging data direct from the manufacturer’s connected-vehicle service | Wherever the vehicle has a signal | The manufacturer offering an API and the vehicle being enrolled |
| Connected-charger feed | Charging status and session data from the charging hardware | Only at chargers on that network | Networked chargers and an integration with them |
A platform can include more than one – such as an OEM API for battery data and a charger feed for depot charging. The practical answer is that location data is always incomplete and requires at least one of the other two pieces of data to be available, and what types are available depends on the vehicles and chargers in use.
Fleets electrify for many reasons – cost, emission, policy, etc., and the regulatory landscape is different by region and evolves over time – Zero Emission Vehicle rules are passed, modified, challenged and sometimes reversed, so don’t take for granted what applies to a fleet in one area should be assumed to apply to a fleet elsewhere (this is context, not legal advice). When EVs are part of the mix, the fleet manager’s role expands from “where are my vehicles and how are they being used” to “will each vehicle have sufficient charge to complete its mission, and is the battery being kept in good health.
Why do electric fleets need more than GPS tracking?
A diesel vehicle that has a quarter tank can be filled in five minutes, just about anywhere. EV’s have a maximum range of a quarter charge and can then take up to 20 minutes to hours to recharge depending on the charger. This alters the fleet’s visualizations.
Fuel is a cost line for a diesel fleet that you look at after the fact. Charge is a live real time constraint for an electric fleet. A van that leaves the depot under-charged may not be able to make all of its deliveries, while a vehicle sent on a route longer than in the real world leaves a driver and load stranded. Thus, an EV fleet platform must be able to address questions that a GPS-only platform never had to: What is the current charge level of each vehicle? Would that suffice for the route and load as weather conditions dictate? Who are charging and will they be ready for the morning shift?
GPS tracking is still key — position, route history, geofencing and driver behaviour is still needed. However, on an electric fleet the location features are compared on the basis of the battery condition. When a vehicle has 70% charge, 40 miles away from the depot is very different than 12% charge, 40 miles away from the depot. What makes EV fleet management so valuable is the ability to view location and energy data on a single screen.
What is the difference between state of charge and battery health?
These are the two battery numbers that all EV fleet platforms should recognize and mixing them up results in poor decisions.
State of charge (SoC): the current level of battery charge, indicated as a percentage, similar to a car’s fuel gauge. This is variable and changes with the driving and charging of the vehicle. SoC reflects what is used every day for dispatch: can this vehicle go on this route today?
State of health (SoH) is the amount of the battery’s original capacity, in percentage terms, that is still available after months or years of use. A battery at 100% SoH will hold its full designed charge; a battery degraded to 80% SoH will only hold 80% of its full charge, thus limiting the distance the vehicle can travel with a “full” charge (100% SoC) as compared to when new. SoH is a slow-changing parameter and what you use for long-term fleet planning—what vehicles are losing range, when might a battery need attention, and how should ageing vehicles be assigned.
| State of charge (SoC) | State of health (SoH) | |
| Answers | How full is the battery now? | How much capacity remains vs when new? |
| Changes | Constantly, by the minute | Slowly, over months and years |
| Used for | Daily dispatch and range checks | Long-term planning and battery lifecycle |
| Analogy | Fuel gauge | Engine wear |
A platform that displays SoC and not SoH will allow you to operate your vehicles on the daily, but will not alert you to which ones are silently being compromised. A platform that states it shows both should be questioned as to the source of the SoH number, which can only be estimated from charge cycles over time from the vehicles BMS.
How does charging management work in a fleet platform?
Charging is where electric fleets are generating new operational jobs for diesel fleets, and where a fleet platform can pack a lot of value.
Fundamentally, charging management is the knowledge of the charging status of all vehicles: which ones are plugged in, which ones are charging, which ones are full, and which ones are idle and not charging. That right there is a sure-fire way to avoid the common mistake of finding that three vans were plugged into dead sockets in the morning at 6 a.m.
Status is not the only aspect of charging management, it can also include depot coordination – ensuring vehicles in greatest need are plugged in first if there are more vehicles than chargers – and cost, as electricity charges are frequently different at different times of the day and it is cheaper to charge a vehicle overnight on an off-peak compared to charging it during a peak charging period. Some platforms can sync with the charging hardware on the network, while others are based on the car’s charging status report.
The honest position for a buyer: charging data can be either from the vehicle (from the BMS) or from the charger (from a connected charging network) and those two tell you different things. Vehicle-side data goes where the vehicle goes, charger-side data provides depot-level control and is only accessible at chargers located on the network. At every vendor ask what they use for charging, as this will be the deciding factor whether you see charging off depot or not.
How do you plan routes and ranges for an electric fleet?
Range planning is the science of connecting each route to a vehicle that can indeed complete the distance on the charge available — and it’s not as easy as it seems, as the actual range of an EV is not a single, absolute number.
The range that a vehicle can achieve on any given day is dependent on a number of factors: current state of charge of the battery, battery condition, load carried, terrain, use of heating or air conditioning, and weather— especially cold weather has a significant impact on range. This means that the showroom range for this van is 150 miles, but not the dispatch range. Effective range planning uses the a car’s actual SoC (state of charge) and its actual energy usage along with the actual route driven, not the rated range.
A fleet platform can help with range planning by providing visibility into the single screen of the inputs: current SoC for each vehicle, the route driven on a particular day, and an estimated answer to whether that charge is sufficient for the vehicle to complete that route with a safety margin (where the platform has the ability to model this). There is a great diversity in sophistication. Some tools just display SoC alongside routes assigned and let the dispatcher make the decision, while others model consumption and automatically tag at-risk routes. Both are correct, but you should be aware of which one you are purchasing because the former requires a trained dispatcher and the latter takes care of that for you.
For Example: determining the vehicular accessibility of a route for an electric vehicle. When a dispatcher assigns a delivery round, they take into account the state of the van’s battery, how much range can be achieved based on the battery health, the route distance, and conditions on the day as well as the availability of a compatible charge station on or near the route. If the distance of the route is well within the range, the van should be ok. If it’s near the limit, the dispatcher considers the load, the weather and heating or air-conditioner use, all of which draw down the range, and withholds approval of the route instead of logging it on the range on the dashboard. If the margin is still not sufficient, the following options exist planning a charging stop, reordering the route to another vehicle with a larger battery, or dispatching a diesel vehicle. A platform that incorporates charge, route and conditions, makes that call a breeze, while a platform that model consumption can highlight the at-risk route before it is noticed by the dispatcher. In either case, it’s a decision based on the route as charged, not the showroom range.
Range planning also has some overlap with charging stop planning, which involves knowing where compatible charging stops are located along a longer route where charging stops. This applies more to regional and long-haul electric applications than to electric vehicles in depot-based urban fleets that plug in at night.
How do you manage a mixed fleet of electric and diesel vehicles?
Today most fleets that are looking at electrifying are not all-electric — they are looking at deploying a mix, eVs with an existing diesel or petrol fleet. The need is one platform to do both and not require the manager to use two systems.
Electric and combustion vehicles are managed in the same way for the shared layer (location, route history, geofencing, driver behaviour, maintenance scheduling) and a good fleet platform will handle them as such, on one map and in one set of reports. The difference is that the EVs have additional data that is specific to EVs – SoC, SoH, charging – that do not exist in a diesel vehicle, and that the diesel vehicles have information that is relevant to them – fuel level and engine data – that do not exist in an EV.
Therefore, the mixed-fleet test for a platform is, does it display the common information for all vehicles on a single screen and does it display EV-specific information without cluttering all the information for the diesel fleet? A manager should be able to view the entire fleet’s status and location at a single glance, and then drill down into an EV and view the battery and charging status. Most fleets are seeking to get away from running EVs on a GPS platform that doesn’t know about batteries, and separately using a spreadsheet to track them.
How does AIQ Connect support electric and mixed fleets?
AIQ Connect is a fleet management and GPS tracking software that is self-hosted and white label. If you’re a fleet operator and have the choice between electric or diesel, it’s fair to consider the platform as a GPS or fleet management tool and the EV-specific battery and charging data as a vehicle-specific tool that relies on the integration and hardware installed.
The table below is an underestimated. In scope rows are functions that are basic GPS and fleet-management functions and are applicable to all vehicles, including electric vehicles. Please be aware that rows marked as Confirm are EV specific capabilities that require EV compatible hardware, manufacturer/charging integration and need to be confirmed with the AIQ Connect team for your particular vehicles prior to relying on this functionality – please do not assume they are included in the core platform.
| Capability | For an electric fleet | Status |
| Live GPS location and route history | Same as any vehicle; the foundation layer | In scope |
| Geofencing and depot/zone alerts | Depot arrival/departure, zone entry, same as diesel | In scope |
| Driver behaviour monitoring | Harsh events, speeding, idling — applies to EVs too | In scope |
| Mixed electric + diesel on one view | One map and report set for the whole fleet | In scope |
| Maintenance scheduling | Service intervals and reminders for all vehicles | In scope |
| Battery state of charge (SoC) | Needs EV-compatible hardware or OEM/charging integration | Confirm |
| Battery state of health (SoH) | Needs BMS data over time via compatible hardware/integration | Confirm |
| Charging status and management | Needs vehicle BMS or connected-charger data feed | Confirm |
| Range planning against live SoC | Depends on battery data being available first | Confirm |
The reason is that battery and charging data isn’t from a generic GPS tracker, and it’s for your benefit. It is sent from the Battery Management System of the vehicle, via an EV capable device or an integration. If you have any questions about what your AIQ Connect can and cannot read battery data from, and how, any vendor, including AIQ Connect, should be able to tell you. AIQ Connect is self-hosted, meaning that battery and charging data you collect can be stored on infrastructure you control — depending on how you deploy it, integrate it and backup it — rather than on a third-party cloud, something that is significant for operators who want to keep their vehicle and energy data out of the cloud; check what self-hosted GPS tracking software means for more information about that.
For predominantly electric operations, the EV fleet management and GPS tracking industry page covers the fit in more detail, and driver behaviour monitoring provides more detail about the safety side of the fit, which is the same for electric and diesel vehicles.
Frequently asked questions about EV Fleet Management and GPS Tracking
Does a GPS tracker show electric vehicle battery level?
No, not on its own. A regular GPS tracker provides details like location, speed, ignition and route, but it does not have access to the battery. Battery state of charge is derived from the Battery Management System (BMS) from the vehicle, via an EV compatible tracker, a manufacturer telematics integration, or a feed from a connected charger. EV fleet management will include GPS tracking along with at least one of these battery data sources.
What is the difference between state of charge and state of health?
State of charge (SoC) is like a fuel gauge, it’s the current state of charge of the battery and varies continuously – you use it for daily dispatch. State of health (SoH) is the amount of battery capacity that is left after using the battery and varies over months and years – you use it for long-term planning. You can have a battery that is 100% charged and 80% healthy, which means that it won’t travel as far when charged to 100% as it will when it is new.
Can one platform manage both electric and diesel vehicles?
Yes, and most fleets require that – they operate a combination. Both are managed in the same way: Location, route history, geofencing, driver behaviour and maintenance. The difference over the two is that EVs have additional battery and charging information that do not exist on diesel vehicles. A good mixed fleet platform provides a birds-eye view of the entire fleet and when you drill into an EV, it also brings up the EV specific data.
Why does electric vehicle range vary so much?
The real world range will vary with state of charge, battery condition, load, terrain, heating or cooling, and weather; particularly low temperatures have a detrimental effect on range. The Rated Range on the spec sheet is a best case scenario, NOT a dispatch figure. Effective range planning is done based on the real route and the charge state of the vehicle and its recent energy consumption, not the rated number.
Does EV charging data come from the vehicle or the charger?
It can be derived from either and they offer you different things. Vehicle-side data (from the Battery Management System) is mobile and moves along with the vehicle. Charger-side data (from a connected charging network) provides depot-level control, and only for the chargers in the network. When asking any vendor about their charging features, find out what source they use—this will determine whether charging is visible when it occurs off depot.
Is EV telematics data more sensitive than regular GPS data?
It is more detailed, well explained. EV telematics provides a GPS platform with battery health and charging patterns, all of which reveal a lot about how a company is doing. This one reason why some operators opt for self-hosted platform: the information for the vehicle, location and energy can remain on an infrastructure controlled by the operator instead of a vendor’s cloud. While self-hosting may not automatically be more secure (this is dependent on how it is configured, including the server, access, backups and integrations), it does mean that the data is in different hands.
Do I need special hardware to track electric vehicles?
No, it is not for location purposes — a typical GPS tracker can be used on an electric car. Battery and charging data: typically yes, requires either an EV compatible device that can interface with the vehicles data bus, or an integration with the manufacturers telematics, or a connected charging feed. The options available will vary by vehicle model and you should check this with the vendor against your vehicle fleet.
Can I plan routes around charging stops?
yes, if the route is regional or longer, this is part of range planning and is knowing where the compatible chargers are on the route and when the vehicle needs it. For depot-based urban fleets, which return to charge each night, charge-stop planning is not as important – the focus here is on ensuring there is sufficient charge remaining in each vehicle for the following day.
Conclusion
GPS tracking is not the only part of managing an electric fleet. Location, route history, geofencing and driver behaviour and maintenance work the same as they do for diesel – but to complete the picture data from the vehicle and/or charger is needed to include state of charge, battery health and charging data, which no generic GPS tracker can do alone. When considering platforms, distinguish between the GPS layer, which most platforms do well, and the EV layer, which can have vastly different capabilities and data sources, and ask for specifics: which of your vehicle models a platform can get battery data from and how.
Next step: If you are operating an electric or mixed fleet, you’ll want to find out from AIQ Connect which of your specific automotive models it can access battery and charging data from, how it’s accessed (via hardware or integration), and how a self-hosted deployment would support your vehicle and energy data. Begin by visiting the EV fleet management and GPS tracking page, or explore the full fleet management platform when taking the leap from research to evaluation.
