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It’s one thing to have a large number of charging points in your company car park, but you also need to be able to use them optimally according to the needs of each employee and, above all, the energy available at any given time. That’s exactly what the Neofleet solution offers.

To meet the recharging needs of employees who drive electric or plug-in hybrid cars, companies have been investing massively in fleets of recharging points in recent years. But having these charging points is not everything. The company’s electricity network may not be sufficient to supply all the cars at the same time with the same power. It will therefore distribute the available power fairly between the vehicles. This is known as ‘load balancing’, and most installations are now equipped with it. But we are now realising that this is not enough…

Prioritising recharging needs

The NEOFLEET concept goes a step further by also taking account of individual priorities and weather forecasts, as Paul de Gheldere, CEO of Netika-NEOFLEET, which designed, developed and markets NEOFLEET, explains.
‘In concrete terms, when an employee arrives at the office, he plugs his vehicle into a terminal without needing to linger near it. They go through reception to enter their recharging requirements on the tablet provided, or via the App on their smartphone. For example, he wants his battery to be 80% charged by 2pm, the time he leaves the office. Neofleet will then automatically manage the recharging of all the vehicles to make it as optimal as possible.

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If the charging points are powered by solar panels, the system will take into account the amount of sunshine expected at that address to optimise charging during those hours of the day. The same applies if the company has its own wind turbine.
As for priorities, these are defined from the outset by the company in collaboration with the Neofleet teams so that the system can then manage them automatically. ‘Full electric vehicles, for example, have priority over PHEV models, which can – at worst – run on petrol. People who stay in the office all day and therefore have a whole day to recharge their car are given less priority than a salesperson or technician who spends 2 hours in the office before heading off to the customer. The system will also take into account the fact that some employees can recharge at home because they have a charging point there.

Book your top-up

Neofleet is software hosted in the cloud, so it can be installed on any recharging installation – new or existing – regardless of brand. In particular, it can control POWERDALE charging points, despite their disappearance from the market. ‘All that’s required is that the charging points comply with the OCPP standard, which is the case for all recent charging points in Belgium,’ explains Paul de Gheldere.
The system is multisite, allowing employees to reserve a charging slot at another site.

Satisfying everyone despite an insufficient number of terminals

Companies do not generally install the same number of charging points as they have electrified cars. So how do you charge all the vehicles, taking into account priorities and reservation requests?
With NEOFLEET, it’s simple. Take a company that has 20 charging points for 60 cars. In the morning, the first cars to arrive will use the charging points, while the next forty cars will not have a charging point available. They will nevertheless communicate their needs via the App available on their smartphone, so that NEOFLEET can include them in the charging schedule. NEOFLEET will then contact the people concerned, asking them to leave their chargepoint at a given time, in favour of someone else who will be invited to take their place.
If the event has not taken place within a pre-set period of time after the agreed time, the receptionist will be notified and will be able to take action or reassign the swap to another terminal.

A complete fleet management tool

Neofleet is also programmed to manage the reimbursement of home recharging costs for employees who have a charging point at home. But it goes much further than just managing recharging. The software incorporates other functions that make it a genuine fleet management system. ‘It is connected to the fuel card systems, so it can monitor each employee’s ‘energy’ budget, generating alerts in the event of suspicious behaviour or less than environmentally-friendly driving by an employee – which could have an impact on the fuel budget or accident statistics.
All the documents relating to vehicles and drivers are centralised in a document management system on the platform, making it possible to track servicing, tyre changes, green insurance cards, car policies, claims reports and even expense claims to be reimbursed. You can also monitor vehicle mileage and compliance with leasing contracts.

In short, since 2017, Neofleet has been serving fleets ranging from 10 to 500 cars, and not just electric cars.
Neofleet has become a comprehensive fleet analysis and management tool with a wide range of possibilities. The software is also capable of comparing changes in the fleet’s CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, and forecasting changes in these statistics on the basis of future vehicles ordered but not yet in the fleet, so that companies can plan their budgets in line with their CO2 emissions policy and better manage their orders.
NEOFLEET is offered by a network of installers.

Source: Published in Link2Fleett on 28 January 2024 at 16:06 By Mr Damien Malvetti (Read the article on Link2Fleet)

Paul de Gheldere

CEO

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