Charger for a fleet: depot, public charging station or both

Anyone who electrifies a fleet discovers early on that the question is not which charger to buy, but where each vehicle will charge. The answer comes from the routine: how many kilometers it drives per day, whether it returns to base and how long it sits parked. This text shows the three charging arrangements for a fleet, how to size the depot and what to measure for the cost-per-kilometer math to add up.

Start with the vehicle's routine

Before talking about power, it is worth noting three pieces of data for each vehicle or group of vehicles:

• Daily mileage: how many kilometers it does on a normal day and on a peak day.
• Return to base: whether it ends the day at the company depot or at the driver's home.
• Parked window: how many hours in a row it goes without driving, and at what time.

With that in hand, the fleet usually splits into profiles.

Profile	Routine	Arrangement that usually works
Urban delivery	Drives by day and sleeps at the depot	AC charger at the depot, overnight
Service and sales	Drives all day, far from base	Public charging station along the way, with the depot to top up
Two-shift operation	Stops little between one shift and the next	DC fast charging, at the depot or at a public charging station
Vehicle that sleeps at the driver's home	Does not return to base	Public charging station, with a receipt for each session

Charger at the depot

The depot is the cheapest arrangement per kilometer when the vehicle sits parked for many hours, because charging happens during time it would already spend without driving. For that, an AC charger may be enough. At our Pinhais unit, for example, the AC charger is 22 kW, and the real speed depends on the vehicle's onboard charger: it is worth checking this figure in the spec sheet of each fleet model.

Not every vehicle needs a charger just for itself. If the fleet sits parked all night, the same point can serve more than one vehicle, in sequence. The math starts from the energy each one uses per day and the parked window. A two-shift operation, on the other hand, does not have that slack, and there the depot calls for DC fast charging.

The depot's limit is almost always the energy supply, not the charger. Before buying the equipment, check how much power is left at the energy entrance and whether the utility will need to do construction work. ABVE points out that the sector's bottleneck today is in the timeline and conditions for connecting a new load to the grid, the subject of an ANEEL public consultation on connection rules (ABVE study with the Tupi platform). In the same publication, the association cites the expansion of electrification in corporate and logistics fleets among the drivers of fast charging growth.

Public charging station

The public charging station solves two cases: the vehicle that needs a charge mid-shift and the fleet that does not yet have its own charger. It lets you start without construction work at the depot and, on top of that, it measures the operation's real consumption before any investment.

For a fleet, three things weigh at a public charging station:

• Hours: a fleet that drives at dawn or on weekends needs a point open at those times. In our network, Pinhais and Boqueirão are open 24 hours.
• Power: mid-shift, parked time costs money, so DC fast charging is what works. Our units have a DC charger with a CCS2 connector, 60 kW in Pinhais and Boqueirão.
• Proof: each charge needs to become a record that the finance department accepts. At our points, energy is charged per kWh measured, with a receipt for each session.

All units, with address and hours, are listed in charging points. The effect of the switch on cost per kilometer is in electric car for a fleet and company.

Both together

Most fleets end up in the middle: the depot does the routine charging, overnight, and the public charging station covers the day that went off script. The mixed arrangement also helps size the depot. Instead of buying power for the worst day of the year, the company buys for the normal day and uses the public network for the rest.

What to measure

A fleet is managed by numbers. For charging to factor into the cost per kilometer, each session needs to record:

• Energy delivered, in kWh.
• Vehicle or driver that charged.
• Point and time of the charge.
• Amount paid, when the charge is away from the depot.

Without this record, the depot's energy becomes a single line on the company's electricity bill, and no one knows which vehicle used how much. When choosing the depot charger, ask how the system stores and exports this data.

Before deciding, check

• Routine: daily mileage, return to base and parked window of each fleet profile.
• Energy: power available at the entrance, the need for utility construction work and the connection timeline.
• Spaces: how many charging spaces fit in the depot without hampering vehicle maneuvering.
• Safety: since February 2026, a national Fire Department guideline for charging points is in effect, with design and inspection parameters, according to ABVE.
• Public network: charging stations along the route, with hours and power that serve the fleet.

If the company also wants to open the depot chargers to customers or the public, the design changes: see a charging station in the parking lot and charging for customers: charge for it or offer it free. Those who start charging third parties for a charge need to think about invoicing and taxes, and the Velquia blog explains this starting from a home point: a home charging station and charging third parties for a charge.

Where Elektro Charge comes in

In our network there have already been more than 4,300 charges and more than 100,000 kWh delivered. For fleets and logistics, we handle the charging of the operation's vehicles, with consumption measured at each session and a team that looks after the points. If the company already has a charger at the depot and wants to know whether another arrangement fits, that is a question for the conversation: tell us how it operates today.