Fuel remains one of the largest single costs in running a fleet.
For high-mileage operations, it can account for around 20% of the total cost of ownership. With fuel prices continuing to fluctuate significantly, finding ways to reduce consumption is more important than ever.
Connected vehicle technology is now giving fleet managers access to real-time data about their vehicles and drivers that simply wasn't available before, without the need for a traditional telematics black box. Through 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi-based systems, modern connected vehicles can report diagnostics, location, fuel consumption, driver behaviour, and more, all on a single dashboard.
The key to running a fleet effectively is knowledge: knowing what is happening, when and why. Here's how connected vehicle technology can help you act on that knowledge to reduce fuel costs.
Reduce your total mileage
The simplest way to reduce fuel spend is to drive fewer miles. Connected vehicle technology provides real-time odometer data for every vehicle in your fleet, making it straightforward to identify which vehicles are logging the most trips and the greatest distances.
With this visibility, you can explore alternatives, increase the use of video conferencing, batch deliveries within time constraints, or reassign routes to reduce unnecessary round-trips. Allstar’s business mileage tracking solution can help you keep track of your fleet’s mileage usage and understand where cuts in mileage can be made.
Choose the right vehicles
One of the biggest long-term factors in fuel consumption is the type of vehicles you operate. There can be substantial differences in real-world fuel efficiency between what seems to be very similar models. Connected vehicle technology helps highlight these differences using actual usage data, giving you better information for future procurement decisions.
This is particularly valuable when considering the transition to electric vehicles. Route data and driving-style information can help you identify which vehicles in your fleet are the strongest candidates for replacement with zero-emission alternatives.
For commercial vehicle fleets, payload is an additional factor. Ensuring vehicles are correctly sized for the loads they carry is crucial; it will always cost more to move a small load in an oversized van.
Reduce idling time
While miles driven contribute significantly to fuel spend, so does idling, vehicles left stationary with the engine running. Using real-time location and ignition data, connected vehicle technology can measure idle time across your entire fleet.
Understanding where and when idling occurs allows you to optimise schedules, improve routing and reduce unnecessary waiting time at loading and unloading points. Actively managing these factors increases vehicle utilisation and can even reduce the overall fleet size required.
Monitor driver behaviour data
A further major factor in fuel efficiency is individual driving style. Rapid acceleration, harsh braking and tight cornering all have a measurable impact on real-world fuel consumption. Connected vehicle technology enables fleet managers to monitor driver behaviour data across all vehicles in real time.
With this information, you can identify drivers whose habits are costing the business money, provide targeted coaching, and introduce incentives to encourage more efficient driving. Beyond fuel savings, this also contributes directly to improved driver safety.
Knowing what real-time data you actually need
With so much data now available, it is worth being clear about what you actually need to monitor in real time and what you do not. Having too much information, much of which is not immediately actionable, can have the opposite effect, leaving you drowning in data rather than acting on it. A useful framework before implementing any connected vehicle solution is to ask:
What is the goal of having this information?
How long will it take to turn the data into something actionable?
What technology is required to gather it?
What will you actually be able to do with it?
Take fuel as an example. Real-time fuel purchasing data is genuinely useful if it allows you to understand daily spend and identify areas for reduction. But if you are presented with hundreds of transactions daily without any structure or context, making sense of them requires significant time and effort, with no guarantee of useful insight at the end.
The most effective approach is to look for systems where real-time controls can be automated, reducing the administrative burden while still giving you meaningful oversight. Being able to set spending controls for individual drivers through a dashboard, for instance, gives you effective real-time management without requiring you to approve every individual transaction.
Spend less at the pump
Connected vehicle data works particularly well when combined with fuel card data. Transaction records covering fuel volumes and expenditure dovetail with connected vehicle insights to give a complete picture of where fuel is being bought, by whom and at what cost.
With an online account management platform like Allstar Online, all of this data is presented on a single dashboard, both current and historic, allowing you to skip straight to the analysis stage. You can see what is being spent, where and by whom, enabling you to make tactical, informed decisions about where drivers refuel and strategic decisions about vehicle choice.
Getting connected vehicle technology right
Connected vehicle technology offers genuine potential to reduce fuel costs, improve driver behaviour and make fleet operations more efficient. But the value comes not from collecting data, but from acting on it.
Start by identifying the specific outcomes you want to achieve, then put the right technology and processes in place to manage the data that serves those goals. Once you have that clarity, connected vehicle technology puts you firmly in control.
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