Why Telematics Matters for a Mixed Fleet (And Where It Falls Short)

What Telematics Does Well for Mixed Fleets

Telematics platforms are excellent at tracking what vehicles do. For mixed fleets running both ICE and electric vehicles, telematics handles the machine layer across both powertrains.

• → Real-time location and routing. Works the same for diesel vans and electric vans. Route optimization adjusts for range limits on EVs.
• → Fuel and energy consumption. Telematics tracks liters per 100 km for ICE vehicles and kWh per 100 km for EVs. This helps you compare running costs across your mixed fleet.
• → Battery state of charge and charging logs. Where the vehicle charged, when it started and stopped, and how much energy was delivered.
• → Battery health trends. Degradation over time, helping you plan replacement cycles and assess total cost of ownership.
• → Maintenance alerts. Engine diagnostics for ICE, battery and motor diagnostics for EVs.

For ICE vehicles, this machine data is comprehensive. Fuel goes in, engine runs, vehicle moves. The entire operation is mechanical and measurable. For EVs, telematics covers the vehicle side effectively. But charging introduces a layer that fueling never had.

Where Telematics Falls Short with EVs

Fueling a diesel vehicle is a 5-minute transaction with one variable: which gas station. Charging an EV involves connector types, power levels, authentication methods, payment systems, charging curves, temperature effects, and power sharing between stalls. The complexity is on a different level.

Telematics sees "vehicle charged from 20% to 80% in 45 minutes at location X." That is useful data. But it cannot see what happened around that session.

• → Why a session failed. Was it a broken connector? A payment error? The wrong plug type? Telematics shows zero energy delivered. It does not show the cause.
• → Whether someone understands AC vs DC. A person who plugs into a 22 kW AC charger expecting DC fast charging speeds will wait three times longer than necessary. Telematics shows a long session, not a misunderstanding.
• → Whether problems recur with the same person or station. Telematics may log repeated short sessions at a location. It cannot tell you that the same person keeps struggling with the same charger because they do not know how to authenticate.
• → What happens at public chargers you do not control. At a depot, you own the hardware. At a public station, your team is on their own.

Studies suggest that roughly 1 in 5 public charging attempts encounter some kind of problem. Telematics records the gap in charging data. It cannot tell you what went wrong.

The Charging Behavior Gap

Telematics already tracks driving behavior: harsh braking, speeding, excessive idling. But EV charging behavior is a different category entirely, and no telematics platform collects it.

Charging behavior is what your team does not understand about charging. It is the decisions people make at the charger, often without realizing they are making suboptimal choices.

• → A person charges to 100% at every DC fast charger, wasting 30 to 40 minutes per session waiting through the slowest part of the charging curve.
• → A person does not know their car has battery preconditioning and consistently gets slow charging speeds in winter.
• → A person keeps trying to use the wrong connector type and gives up after multiple failed attempts.
• → A person does not realize that power sharing between stalls means slower speeds when other cars are charging next to them.

These are not vehicle problems. They are knowledge problems. Telematics cannot detect them because they happen in the person's head, not in the vehicle's data stream. For a mixed fleet in transition, these problems multiply. Your team went from a powertrain they understood to one they are still learning. The gap is predictable, but invisible without the right data.

What Mixed Fleet Operators Actually Need

You need two data layers, not one.

For ICE vehicles, machine data is enough. The fueling process is simple and uniform. For EVs, you need both layers. The person behind the wheel is making decisions that directly affect charging time, battery longevity, and operational costs.

Consider battery degradation. A 2026 Geotab study found that average EV battery degradation is around 2.3% per year, but heavy DC fast charging can increase that to approximately 3.0%. Telematics can track degradation over time. It cannot tell you whether your team is accelerating it because they do not understand when fast charging is necessary and when Level 2 would be a better choice.

The difference matters financially. For a mixed fleet, the EVs are typically the newer, more expensive vehicles. Protecting those assets requires understanding how your team charges, not just what the vehicle records.

Bridging the Gap

The transition from ICE to EV is not just a hardware change. It is an operational shift. Your vehicles change. Your fueling infrastructure changes. And the knowledge your team needs changes completely.

Telematics handles the vehicle side of this transition well. It tracks energy consumption, charging sessions, and battery health across your mixed fleet. Keep using it. That data is essential.

But for the human side, you need a different layer. EVcourse provides step-by-step scenarios for real charging problems your team will encounter at public stations. And through its charging feedback platform, your team logs how each session went, creating a continuous record of what is actually happening at the charger.

You see which problems come up most, whether they keep recurring, and where the knowledge gaps are. Machine data from telematics, plus human data from EVcourse. That is the complete picture for a mixed fleet in transition.

Frequently Asked Questions