Across South Africa’s fleet sector, operators are analysing their actual routes and cost per kilometre, with many finding that a portion of their work is already electric-ready, far earlier than expected, says electric vehicles-as-a-service business, Everlectric.

“When operators understand their routes, payloads, stop-start patterns and charging environment, the decision becomes simple.”

The company states that the right electric vehicle (EV) is the one that can deliver on existing service levels for less than the internal-combustion fleet, which most companies only discover once they analyse their own data.

Everlectric COO Paul Plummer points out that some fleet operators want to “see what EVs can do”, so they will try to electrify the hardest, longest, most unusual route on the network.

However, when this does not work, operators conclude that they are not EV-ready, when “they have just started in the wrong part of the fleet”, says Plummer.

“For urban logistics and retail distribution, utilisation is the first step. Many operators are running delivery vehicles, with dense routes and high monthly mileage on repeatable loops between depots and stores. That is precisely where EVs tend to win first,” he explains.

In this context, Plummer elaborates that fuel and maintenance become the real cost problem, not the range. He highlights that, once those duty cycles are mapped properly, it often becomes clear that a significant share of those delivery routes are suited to electrification.

However, pharmaceutical and cold chain fleets frame the problem differently, prioritising product integrity and reliability.

“They need to know that an EV can power both the drivetrain and the refrigerated body, complete all drops, and keep temperatures in range without compromise,” Plummer explains.

The “good news” is that many of these deliveries run on very stable schedules in well-defined urban or peri-urban areas, and that type of predictability is what makes EVs viable.

Moreover, sales and technical support teams form another part of the spectrum, often being over-supplied in terms of efficiency.

However, Plummer notes that this does not mean that EVs are “off the table”, but that a fleet needs to be separated into use cases.

He points out that although the heavy rural or cross-border work might be possible as EV options expand, the mistake is trying to “solve everything on one day” rather than starting with the parts of the fleet that are already a good fit.

“Fleet operators must focus on the norm, not the exception. Stop designing your EV strategy around the worst-case day of the year. Design it around the routes you run every single week,” Plummer advises.

Additionally, he highlights that this is where an EV-as-a-service model becomes “powerful”. Instead of buying vehicles outright, guessing lifetime costs and building a charging and data stack, operators can take an integrated monthly service that includes vehicles, chargers, managed electricity, maintenance, insurance and telematics.

Everlectric’s process begins with an operator’s data, which is placed under a non-disclosure agreement followed by a simulation of the operation’s routes, the identification of which vehicles and industries are EV-ready, and a proof of concept with a live pilot.

Plummer states that this allows the operator to see the “real energy use, the real uptime and the real cost per kilometre” in their own operation before committing to scale.

“Choosing the right EV for your fleet is about matching the right vehicle class to the right work, industry by industry, route by route. If you know how far you drive, what you carry, where your vehicles sleep, and what you truly spend to keep them moving, you already have everything you need to make a better decision,” he concludes.