It Pays to Take a Thoughtful Approach to Alternative Fuel Adoption

With sustainability top of mind for many lawmakers, investors, and consumers, and the cost of electric vehicles falling to a point where prices have never been more attractive, the time is ripe for businesses to consider transitioning their fleets to alternative-fuel vehicles. “Consider” being the essential word here: any significant shift – a decision to incorporate EVs, for example – should be undertaken only after doing due diligence and asking some thoughtful questions about whether it makes sense for the business.

Avoiding switcher’s remorse

“You can’t just flip a switch tomorrow,” says Dain Giesie, Assistant Vice President of Business Development at Enterprise Fleet Management. “You need to understand what the operational impacts are, what the cost components are, all the variables, so you go into it with your eyes wide open. You want to eliminate any surprises and avoid disruptions to your business.”

Many EV converts realize only after making the switch that the reality does not match their assumptions. According to a 2024 McKinsey study, as many as 46% of US EV owners intend to switch back to gas-powered vehicles, citing inadequate charging infrastructure and total cost of ownership.

Asking the right questions

When discussing fleet electrification with customers, Enterprise starts the process with a feasibility assessment, examining factors like the type of terrain drivers cover on their routes, the load their vehicles are carrying, the distance they’re traveling each day, and their idling time. (It’s also important to identify whether there are even EVs available that can do specific jobs currently performed by combustion-engine vehicles.)

The goal is to understand the real-world range of vehicles in operation to help ensure that decisions are made without placing unnecessary stress on drivers or businesses. Every variable has a significant impact on the charging range a business might expect from an electric vehicle put into service to do the work now done by a gas-powered vehicle. And every variable has implications for the total cost of managing a fleet.

“You've never before had to think about where you're going to fuel your vehicle. You’d just go to the gas station,” says Roan Oropesa, Strategic Business Development Director at Enterprise Fleet Management. “Now you have to determine, am I going to wait to charge at my office? As the business owner, am I going to put charging points at my employees’ homes and then reimburse them? Am I going to let them rely on public charging? Or is it going to be a combination of all of those things?

“There are potential hidden costs,” he adds. “Because your downtime may be zero, like with home charging. But out in the wild, you likely will need more time to charge, and that creates delays. These are the things you need to be thinking about before you commit.”

Before deciding, test and learn

As with most aspects of fleet management, data drives better decision-making. “If you don’t have connected-car or telematics data, you won’t have a great understanding of how your vehicles are operating,” Oropesa says. “It becomes about guesswork and that makes the process much more challenging.”

After examining the data and determining it may make sense to electrify, your next step should be a pilot program that allows you to test on a small scale and learn the potential effect on the business. Working with a limited number of drivers and vehicles can tell you a lot about the operational and maintenance impacts, which in turn can inform better decisions about whether and how to expand beyond the pilot, according to Oropesa.

Domino’s Pizza: starting small to supercharge growth

After identifying sustainable delivery as a competitive differentiator for the brand, Domino’s Pizza worked with Enterprise Fleet Management to pilot EV delivery at select corporate-owned stores. After seeing initial positive results, including improved driver recruitment and retention numbers, Domino’s has expanded the program to include select franchised stores, as well.

With support from Enterprise on everything from local hands-on account management to vehicle acquisition and financing to telematics solutions and maintenance, Domino’s now operates the largest electric pizza-delivery fleet in the U.S., at more than 1,100 branded EVs and counting. These vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions, a 259 mile battery range, advanced safety features, and lower average maintenance costs than nonelectric vehicles.

A moment to consider the bigger picture

The Domino’s partnership is just one example of what’s possible when you work with a trusted, experienced mobility solutions provider to ask the right questions and make sense of the data. And according to Giesie, it’s also an example of how a thoughtful approach to alternative-fuel fleets can present even bigger strategic opportunities.

“It’s a moment when a business owner can reimagine their fleet and make really transformational changes that would have been hard to do without some sort of disruption,” Giesie says. “Enter new markets or serve their existing markets in a new way, even redirect the image or focus of the company and where they want to go… it’s a time when many things are possible.”