2024 Charge Management RFP Guidebook for Electric Fleets

A charge management system (CMS) allows you to charge your electric vehicles in the most reliable, easy and affordable way possible.

With dozens of solutions for charge management on the market today, it can be difficult for fleet operators to assess which system is best suited to their particular fleet’s needs. Along with vehicles and charging hardware, choosing the right CMS is critical to planning, developing and operating an electric fleet efficiently and reliably.

The CMS lies at the heart of the fleet’s charging ecosystem, interfacing directly with vehicles, EVSE equipment, electric utility infrastructure and behind-the-meter/customer-side electrical equipment. It’s the user interface that fleet operators will use daily to monitor charging operations and optimize cost to charge while ensuring vehicle readiness. The CMS can significantly affect capital investment and operational costs, as well as the long-term operational success of the fleet.

As you seek a CMS provider, evaluating their capabilities and features by a defined set of standards to ensure you invest in a system that will meet your fleet’s unique needs.

In this guidebook, we'll review 4 featured categories:

• Energy Optimization and Cost-Efficiency
• Scalability and Flexibility
• Reliability, Resilience and Security
• Operational Success

Plus 8 Pro Tips throughout the guidebook to aid you in understanding how certain items fit into the overall EVSE and electrification ecosystem.

This comprehensive guidebook features key proposal components and sample language describing the base requirements of the CMS to consider when writing your RFP, RFI or RFQ.

*V2 - This 2024 guidebook incorporates new learnings and developments since the release of V1 published in 2023.