Planning a phased rollout: from pilot to full fleet

Few fleets switch every vehicle at once, and few should. A phased rollout lets you learn on a small scale, fix what does not work, and scale with real data. The trick is to plan the first phase with the last one in mind.

Phase 0: understand what you have

Before buying anything, collect a few weeks of data on your current fleet.

• Daily distance per vehicle, including the longest days.
• Where and how long each vehicle is parked, especially overnight.
• Shift and departure times.
• Your site’s electricity use over the day, from the meter data.
• Your grid connection and any limits from the grid operator.

This tells you which vehicles are easy to replace, which are hard, and how much charging power your site can support without upgrades.

Phase 1: a pilot that teaches you something

Pick a small group of vehicles on routes that are predictable and well within electric range, including in winter. Choose drivers who are willing to give feedback. Run the pilot long enough to cover at least one change of season if you can, because winter behaves differently.

Decide in advance what you want to learn: real consumption per route, how reliably vans get plugged in, the effect on your site’s power peak, what drivers need to know, and what it costs per kilometre. Write these down, so the pilot ends with answers rather than impressions.

Build infrastructure for the end state

The most expensive mistake in a phased rollout is building twice. Even if the pilot needs four chargers, plan cable routes, ducts and the distribution board for the number you expect later. Opening the ground once is much cheaper than twice.

Talk to your grid operator early. Chargers on the low-voltage grid must be notified before they go into operation and need consent above 12 kVA in total, and a bigger connection can take time and may come with a construction cost contribution. Knowing the timeline early stops it from blocking phase 2.

Choose chargers that accept remote control through open standards such as OCPP, so you can add load management and change software provider later without replacing hardware.

Phase 2 and beyond: scale in steps

Use the pilot data to plan the next group. Replace vehicles as their leases end or as they reach replacement age, so you are not paying off diesels you no longer use. Keep the hardest routes, such as the longest or most irregular ones, for later phases when you have more experience and possibly newer vehicles.

Each step should answer a simple question before the next one starts: did the vehicles in this group cover their routes, charge reliably and stay within the site’s power limits?

People and process

• Name one person responsible for charging at each site.
• Write a short routine for drivers: plug in on return, check that charging started, report faults.
• Update the company car policy for vehicles that go home, including how home charging is metered and refunded.
• Share pilot results with drivers and managers, including what went wrong and what changed.

Keep the numbers visible

Track a small set of figures across all phases: energy and cost per vehicle, site power peak, charger faults, and vehicles not ready at departure. If these stay stable as the fleet grows, the rollout is on track. If one gets worse, you will see it before it becomes a problem.

How jump.ac helps

We help you pick pilot vehicles from your own data, plan infrastructure for the full fleet, and run charging with reports that show whether each phase is ready to scale.

Sources

• NAV § 11, Baukostenzuschüsse: gesetze-im-internet.de/nav/__11.html
• Open Charge Alliance, OCPP: openchargealliance.org/protocols/open-charge-point-protocol

Source: NAV § 19, notifying the grid operator about charging equipment