Whether it’s the driver, the car or the environment, being in the best condition helps achieve maximum efficiency and performance. In the world of fleet, there are a lot of factors to keep an eye on.
How to make life easier
Catherine Steel, HR director, Holman
Long hours, tight deadlines and constant pressure can take a real toll on drivers’ wellbeing. And a stressed and tired driver is at a much higher risk of an accident on the road.
We recognise that we don’t have direct control over a driver’s wellbeing, so instead we focus on areas we can influence – creating a supportive environment to help make sure every driver gets home safely each night.
This starts with our own team at Holman. Our recent ‘Great Place to Work UK’ re-certification reflects our commitment to a culture of respect and support. We invest heavily in our team’s training and wellbeing resources. This ensures they’re well-equipped to be as supportive and helpful during emergencies and breakdowns as they can, to reduce the stress for drivers in those critical moments.
We make this support available 24/7 from our contact centres in Chippenham and Birmingham. Keeping drivers well connected and informed means they have one less thing to worry about in stressful times – and can focus on driving safely.
While this support is crucial, our true focus is on preventing incidents before they happen. Through telematics and our Riskmaster programme, we identify dangerous driving patterns such as speeding or harsh braking. This allows us to provide targeted training, addressing these issues head-on and ultimately keeping everyone safer on the road.
The key to creating a safer environment is establishing strong policies that encourage open communication and create a robust support system for drivers. Fewer accidents translate to lower costs, a safer work environment and a happier, more productive workforce – a win-win for everyone.
Focus on physical; major on mental
Paul Hollick, managing director, Lightfoot
We believe that ensuring your drivers are safe and healthy requires a two-pronged approach – looking firstly on the physical side of wellbeing and then concentrating on the mental aspect. This is a vital process because driver error accounts for two-thirds of all accidents on our roads.
Our in-vehicle devices provide real-time, constructive feedback to drivers, encouraging smoother driving habits. This technology helps to reduce physical strain and fatigue by minimising harsh braking, rapid acceleration and aggressive driving manoeuvres. The figures speak for themselves – real-world fleet operations have seen a 40% reduction in at-fault accidents and an 84% decrease in dangerous driving.
But this in-vehicle coaching is not the only solution – it needs backing up with further information and reminders. And that is why we offer tips and advice through our blog, emails and social media channels to improve physical and mental wellbeing such as how to drive safely in different weather conditions, and how to reduce stress within fleet operations.
However, even the most advanced technology requires employee engagement to be effective – think carrot, not stick. Therefore, we adopt ‘gamification’ to make driving a more engaging and less stressful experience. By turning safe driving into a game with rewards and recognition, drivers feel more motivated and less pressured. With the added peace of mind of having a camera in the cab, their stress levels are reduced, which allows them to focus better.
An example of this is Manuel Espinoza, a meter reader at SES Water.
“The Lightfoot system is an encouragement to do my best to be a better driver. In the app, you can compare your driving style against the rest of the team – I like to see how far I am from the top,” explains Espinoza. “It’s a win for us. Even when we are driving our personal vehicles, we are thinking about driving behaviour.”
By recognising and rewarding safe driving behaviours, we are able to boost drivers’ confidence and job satisfaction as well as providing them with an in-cab ally in the event of an incident.
Better batteries for fleets
Dr Sara Ridley, engineering and quality director, Autocraft EV Solutions
We are in the midst of an era-defining shift to electric. This technology holds untold potential as the automotive industry works to achieve its vision of a sustainable mobility ecosystem. Although EV ownership rates have risen sharply over the past few years, there is still a long way to go.
Uncertainty around the long-term health of electric vehicle batteries represents one of the biggest impediments to a successful transition to electric. Autocraft believes EV battery repair and remanufacturing can play a major role in addressing this issue. And yet, awareness levels of the available solutions remain low.
While combustion engines are very much a known quantity, there is an element of the unknown with EVs. If an ICE vehicle breaks down, there is a clear and well-trodden path to a repair. For EVs, however, that path is less defined. This poses a clear risk, given that some estimates put the total failure rate of EV batteries at 1.5%. While it is worth noting that these batteries are no more prone to failure than their ICE counterparts, it underlines the need for a robust contingency plan. For this, we must first understand how faults occur.
In the same way that a chain is as strong as its weakest link, an EV battery can only charge to the level of its weakest cell. A small number of underperforming cells can therefore drag down the performance of the entire pack, resulting in a drop in capacity or total failure, in the worst-case scenario.
When we can pinpoint the underlying cause of performance decline at a cellular level, then we can address it, highlighting the importance of precise testing protocols.
Most widely used testing methods cannot account for why a drop in performance has happened, meaning the repair process is based on a degree of guesswork, which opens the door to repeat failure.
Autocraft’s Revive testing gives us the most accurate picture of battery state-of-health on the market, allowing us to identify faults before they’ve even occurred. From here, we can restore optimal capacity by replacing failed or underperforming modules with healthy ones. Although this is a vastly simplified description of the procedure, we have proven that with the right level of rigour within the repair process, it is possible to repair batteries effectively, safely and at scale, as we have done on thousands of occasions on behalf of OEMs.
Until now, ‘failed’ batteries were sent to landfill. Our experience has shown that the vast majority of battery packs can be returned to optimal health via our remanufacturing process.
For environmentally conscious fleet owners, the outcome is that EV ownership becomes markedly more sustainable, since a replacement battery is no longer required. Instead, the existing one can be repaired at a fraction of the financial and environmental cost.
Our mission is to unlock the environmental and performance potential of EVs and educate the market on the possibilities of EV battery testing, repair and remanufacture, paving the way towards a cleaner future for mobility.