A side-by-side comparison of two fleets’ electrification journey

Fleet electrification doesn’t happen overnight—that's a well-known fact by now—and each fleet’s electrification process looks different. FleetOwner spoke with representatives from Elite Home Care, a company that’s transitioned nearly its entire fleet, and Grade A Construction, a mixed fleet with 11 EVs, to offer a comparison of how two completely different fleets made the switch from light-duty ICE vehicles to electric vehicles.

Who are they?

Grade A Construction

Grade A Construction is a woman-owned site work construction company based in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. It facilitates the layout, grading, clearing and demolition, underground utilities and installation of detention systems, stormwater control, and much more for commercial, residential, and governmental construction projects.

While the company owns several pieces of heavy construction equipment and larger heavy-duty trucks, it also has a fleet of pickup trucks used by estimators and project managers.

Elite Home Care

A little further southeast is Elite Home Care, a provider of on-site and in-home care and transportation services for senior citizens and disabled individuals in numerous South Carolina facilities. The company facilitates transport from a senior citizen’s home to Elite Home Care’s adult daycare centers as well as shuttles adults from their homes to the grocery store or pharmacy.

Elite Home Care’s fleet consists only of passenger vans that travel around 200 miles per day on average.

Why switch to EVs?

While both fleets vary widely in their operation and overall fleet, they each had similar reasons for switching to EVs. And it was all about economics.

Chris Russo, Elite Home Care co-founder, said it was during the COVID-19 pandemic when fuel prices bottomed out that he knew they would rise with a vengeance. He began preparing for that time almost immediately. Part of Elite Home Care’s preparation for the rise in fuel prices was settling on an alternative powertrain: an electric vehicle.

About a year later in 2021 when gasoline and diesel prices rose, the Grade A Construction team felt the impact. “Fuel cost was eating us alive,” Jessica Cox, Grade A’s VP of corporate services, told FleetOwner. It was after this rise in fuel prices that the Grade A team sat down to come up with a solution.

“That’s when the EVs came to the table,” Cox explained.

Even the least experienced fleet owner or fleet manager understands that implementing an EV into an existing gas- or diesel-powered fleet is more difficult than it sounds. And these two companies didn’t transition to EVs overnight. Transitioning to an EV is a process that takes time to plan and implement.

Because the Elite Home Care team began discussing their plan early, they had plenty of time to weigh the possibilities, pros, and cons of using an electric vehicle instead of a vehicle powered by a traditional internal combustion engine.

Once the decision to implement EVs was made, Elite Home Care reached out to EV manufacturers to decide which EVs to purchase.

Unlike Elite Home Care, which services routine routes with a predictable range of miles per day, Grade A Construction’s decision to implement EVs took a bit more time.

“Construction is heavy and hard on trucks; they do a lot of miles,” Cox said. “We couldn’t really figure out if EVs would actually be a positive for us.”

Yet after a bit more research and after having a chat with Ford—the supplier of their current pickup fleet—Grade A decided that, while an EV couldn't replace every vehicle in its mixed fleet, it would be a beneficial solution for its estimators, project managers, and other management personnel who frequently travel less than 200 and 300 miles each day.

By July 2022, Grade A took delivery of 11 Ford Lightning pickup trucks, which are each still in operation today.

Elite Home Care also had a meeting with Ford, except this meeting took place before the vehicle manufacturer had its E-Transit in production.

“We set a meeting up with Ford to look at what EVs were coming to market, and they had some mockups of these vans—the E-Transits—at the time,” Russo told FleetOwner. “We said, ‘As soon as you have some, we’re a buyer. We want to try them out.’”

By the end of 2021 and early 2022, Elite Home Care took delivery of four of the first E-Transits to hit the market. The company has now converted 109 of its ICE passenger vans to E-Transits, with its final gas-powered passenger van up for sale.

Two fleets and their EV transition

Elite Home Care

Russo notes that any business transition is a process, and that’s especially true with ICE to EV transitions. The Elite Home Care team started its EV transition by taking stock of the fleet’s current operations and planning from there.

“First, you figure out what you’re doing today,” Russo explained. “It’s all about planning and collecting your data.”

Before adding a single EV to the fleet, Elite Home Care looked at its complete fleet operations with a microscopic lens, analyzing the locations of its drivers, where its vehicles go each day, scrutinizing any wasted time, and analyzing whether its dispatchers placed each driver on the most efficient route possible.

This data collection and analysis not only helped Elite Home Care decide whether EVs were the right choice but also helped the company eliminate waste and become more efficient.

Because Elite Home Care’s vehicles are parked at its business locations each night, the company determined the EVs’ feasibility by taking overnight charging into account. Russo explained the process this way:

“You identify the vehicle that works for you, you figure out how you're going to get a fuel source, and then you make sure that you're going to be able to plan based on your needs and the range and whether ... that's enough range for you to get your job done during the day and then plug in at night,” he said.

Russo doesn’t sugarcoat it: The process of scaling from four E-Transits to 109 was a challenge. The bulk of that challenge was learning the nuances of charging.

At the beginning, when the company had only four E-Transits, Ford facilitated the installation of Level 2 chargers on the side of the building at one of Elite Home Care’s facilities. After finding success with the first few E-Transits, Elite Home Care decided to expand its EV fleet.

It took multiple meetings with Ford and its engineering teams and Ford Pro teams to help facilitate the EV expansion at each of Elite Home Care’s 15 locations.

Now, each location has a 1:1 vehicle-to-charger ratio so that every E-Transit can charge at night. Russo said some drivers will even charge up a bit during the day if necessary to complete afternoon routes. The fleet never uses public charging.

“We planned our routes and our trips around [this charging solution and schedule] because it made sense for us,” Russo said.

Grade A Construction

The EV transition process for Grade A Construction looked vastly different. While the company knew EVs would work well for their foremen, surveyors, and other management personnel because of their limited mileage each day, the Grade A Construction team found charging to be its biggest obstacle to EV implementation, Cox said.

Unlike Elite Home Care, whose drivers returned the passenger vans to the same location each night, Grade A’s management took fleet vehicles home each night. Several questions were raised by the team, including whether an employee would be comfortable having a charger installed at their home, how chargers are installed when an employee rents their home, and what would happen in the event of an employee turnover.

Grade A management also knew employees would have to be compensated for the electricity used to charge their EVs at home.

After their questions were answered through Ford’s guidance and support, Grade A decided, “We’re going to try this and see how it goes,” Cox said.

Ten of the 11 employees who drive the Ford Lightnings for Grade A were able to have a charger installed at their home. The other, who wasn’t able to install a charger because of rental reasons, charges the electric pickup at Grade A’s office or Grade A’s shop location.

It was working closely with Ford that allowed Grade A’s charger installations to happen so quickly and easily, Cox said. She also said that the company has had some terminations since the initial installation of the EV chargers, and taking the chargers out of the former employees’ homes was just as simple as putting them in.

Cox said the employees adapted to the EVs quickly, especially with help from Ford’s online EV portal that “shows us what the electric consumption is for charging this specific vehicle so we can pay the employee back what they have used on their electric bill."