How Your Vehicles Actually Run
This is the single most useful thing you can bring. A charging partner needs to understand your duty cycles: what kinds of vehicles you run, how many, the routes and daily mileage, when they return, and how long they sit before heading back out.
A delivery van that’s parked from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. has very different needs than one that turns around midday. If you have telematics data, pull it. The clearer the picture of how and when your vehicles operate, the more precise the charging plan can be.
Where Your Vehicles Live
Next, get a basic picture of your sites. Where do vehicles park overnight or between shifts? Do you own the property or lease it? Roughly how is the lot laid out? You don’t need engineering drawings, but the site and electrical side of a project often carries the longest lead times, so it’s smart to surface it early rather than discover it late.
The U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation offers planning resources and checklists that can help you organize this kind of site thinking before you talk to anyone.
Related: Who Is Actually Asking for Charging at Your Location
Your Timeline and Phasing
Charging should be built for where you’re headed, not just where you are today. Come with a rough sense of when you plan to add EVs, how many, and over what horizon. Even an approximate phase-by-phase view helps a partner right-size the plan so you’re not tearing things up to expand in a year.
Who Needs to Be at the Table
Fleet charging touches more than the vehicle team. Operations, facilities or site management, finance, and leadership all have a stake, and if you lease, your property owner and your utility do too. Getting the right people involved early heads off the most common stall in fleet electrification: the vehicle decision racing ahead while the charging plan lags behind. Line up who needs to weigh in before the first meeting.
Related: Common Mistakes Fleets Make When Planning Charging
What “Success” Looks Like to You
Be ready to say what a win actually means for your operation. For most fleets it starts with uptime, because vehicles have to be ready when routes begin. From there it might include visibility across multiple sites, clear support expectations, and how hands-on you want to be day to day. Naming your must-haves and your dealbreakers up front lets a partner design around what matters to you instead of guessing.
What You Already Have
Finally, take stock of what’s already in place. Any existing chargers? Telematics or EV charging management software you’re already using? Prior site assessments? And what’s your contingency plan if a charger goes down before a shift? These details shape the plan and help a partner spot gaps and opportunities quickly.
Related: What to Look for in an EV Charging Partner
Why It’s Worth the Prep
Walking in with this picture changes the conversation. Instead of general answers, you get specific, realistic guidance, and you sidestep the costly rework that happens when vehicles and charging get planned in isolation. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need an honest view of how your fleet runs today and where it’s going next.
That’s the starting point OpConnect works from with fleets: turning the real details of your operation into dependable charging that keeps vehicles on schedule, designed, installed, supported, and maintained on American-made hardware built in Portland, Oregon. When you’re ready to talk, you can start at opconnect-ev.com.
Source & Further Reading:
- Joint Office of Energy and Transportation — Technical Assistance Quick Resources: https://driveelectric.gov/quick-resources