Fleet Operator Cut Charging Downtime 42% with 60KW and 80KW DC Charging Piles

A regional electric fleet operator replaced a failing AC charging setup with 16 Soutya 60KW and 80KW DC charging piles. Charge time per vehicle dropped from 9.2 hours to 55 minutes, charger uptime climbed to 99.1%, and charging-related overtime fell by $99,000 per year.

Customer Background

The client runs a commercial delivery and shuttle operation from three depots in the US Midwest. The fleet covers 110 vehicles: 96 electric cargo vans with 60 to 75 kWh battery packs and 14 electric shuttle buses with 210 kWh packs. Roughly 240 drivers work two shifts, and the main depot serves a 180-mile delivery radius with scheduled departures at 05:00 and 14:00.

Two new retail distribution contracts added night routes in early 2023, which pushed daily mileage per van from 92 to 131 miles. A state fleet electrification target requires 60% of the operation to run electric by 2027, and the depot sits at 38%. Meeting that target without adding vehicles or drivers depends on charging throughput.

What Was Blocking the Fleet's Electrification Plan?

The depot had 18 Level 2 AC chargers rated at 7.2 kW, spread across 40 marked bays. A 65 kWh top-up took 9.2 hours, so vans plugged in at 18:30 and stayed parked until 04:00. Only 18 of 40 bays had a charger, which created a nightly queue and forced drivers to shuffle vehicles between bays. Mid-day top-ups for the buses were impossible because the AC units could not deliver enough energy inside a 90-minute window.

Reliability made the situation worse. The 18 units came from two vendors and ran on three separate management apps. Drivers reset faults by hand, which took 40 to 90 minutes per incident, and the maintenance log showed 31 charge-related service calls in the six months before the upgrade. Missed route starts became routine, and the depot spent $9,400 per month on driver overtime and third-party carrier subcontracting to cover gaps.

What Did the Operator Try Before Switching?

• Adding more 7.2 kW AC units. Capex landed at $3,200 per stall plus $6,100 per run in trenching and conduit. Charge time did not change, and the bay-queue problem persisted.
• Upgrading one row to 19.2 kW AC. A pilot of six stalls cut charge time to 3.5 hours. That solved overnight charging but still left no path to mid-day turnaround for the shuttle buses.
• Leasing four 30 kW DC units from two manufacturers. The vans charged acceptably, but buses with 210 kWh packs pulled more power than the units could deliver for a sustained period, and neither vendor's platform exposed connector-level data through a standard interface. Fleet dispatch could not see which vehicle was plugged in where.

Two years and roughly $214,000 in charging hardware and civil work produced a depot that still could not support the 2027 target.

Why Choose the Soutya 60KW / 80KW DC Charging Pile?

The operator evaluated 50 kW, 60 kW, 80 kW, and 120 kW options. A 120 kW specification required a transformer upgrade quoted at $96,000 plus a 14-week utility lead time, which the schedule could not absorb. The 60 kW and 80 kW models matched the site's available headroom.

Four technical points decided the purchase:

• Dual-gun output with dynamic power sharing. Each 80 kW unit delivers 80 kW to a single vehicle or splits the load across two connectors. Two bays share one cabinet, which cut the stall count and the cabling needed.
• Wide three-phase input range. The units accept 380 to 480 V AC input, so the existing 500 kVA transformer served the installation without a service change.
• Open protocol support. OCPP 1.6J integration allowed the operator to consolidate all 16 units into one dispatch dashboard instead of three vendor portals.
• Delivered cost per stall. The Soutya configuration came in at $16,800 per stall. A competing DC proposal priced the same bay count at $24,500 per stall, a $123,000 difference across the project.

Enclosure rating, cable management, an operating range of -30°C to +55°C, and CCS1/CCS2 connector options with CHAdeMO availability covered the mixed fleet and the Midwest winter conditions.

How Was the 60KW / 80KW DC Charging Site Deployed?

The project ran 11 weeks from purchase order to full operation.

1. Load study and power audit (weeks 1-2). The engineering team logged the depot's peak demand at 268 kW against a 500 kVA transformer, leaving 232 kW of headroom. Sixteen DC connectors at full nameplate output would have exceeded that figure, so the design included a site-level power cap.
2. Layout and cable specification (weeks 3-4). Chargers were positioned so every marked bay reached a connector without an extension. DC output cables were specified to the EN 50620 charging cable standard, and connectors followed the IEC 62196 interface series.
3. Civil works and installation (weeks 5-8). Concrete pads, bollards, cable trays, and four 80 kW cabinets plus twelve 60 kW units went in without interrupting nightly departures.
4. Commissioning and OCPP integration (weeks 9-10). All 16 units were mapped to the dispatch platform, with driver RFID authentication and per-vehicle session reporting.
5. Load-management stress test (week 11). The team ran a full-bay evening peak with the site cap active and verified that no vehicle dropped below its target state of charge before departure.

The main obstacle: the transformer could not support four 80 kW cabinets at full output at the same time. Instead of reducing charger count, the integrator set a 300 kW site ceiling in the charger controller. During the 18:30 peak, each unit runs at roughly 62 kW on average and shifts power between connectors as vehicles finish. The vans still reach 80% state of charge in under an hour, and the transformer never exceeded 71% of its rating during the test

What Results Did the Fleet Measure After Six Months?

• Charge time: 9.2 hours to 55 minutes for the same 65 kWh top-up, a 90% reduction.
• Charger uptime: 91.4% across the old AC fleet to 99.1% across the DC piles.
• Vendor-side service calls: 31 in the six months before the upgrade, 4 in the six months after.
• Overtime and subcontracting cost: $9,400 per month to $1,150 per month, a $99,000 annual saving.
• Energy cost per mile: $0.29 to $0.19 after off-peak scheduling tied to the load-management controller.
• Vehicle availability at 05:00 departure: 84% to 97%.

The operational effect reached past the charging bays. Dispatch added a third daily route per van without buying vehicles. Mid-day bus top-ups became standard, which removed a diesel backup coach that had cost $41,000 per year to operate. The depot now reports charging performance in the same weekly review as route completion.

Client Testimonial

“The depot used to run on a schedule built charger availability,” said the fleet director. “Now the schedule runs the chargers. Two winters in, the only charger issue that took a vehicle out of service was a damaged connector cable after a yard collision.”

The maintenance lead added: “Four service calls in six months instead of thirty-one changed how the team plans its week. Nobody resets chargers by hand at 02:00 anymore.”

Lessons and Recommendations

• Audit transformer headroom before specifying charger count. The site cap and power-sharing design cost nothing extra and avoided a $96,000 utility upgrade. Charger count should follow the load study, not the other way .
• Consolidate on one open protocol from day one. Three vendor portals created blind spots in dispatch. OCPP 1.6J support turned 16 units into one view.
• Make cable and connector standards a procurement gate. EN 50620 and IEC 62196 compliance in the tender documents eliminated two suppliers whose DC cables had a shorter flex life in cold weather.
• Reflection: the operator would start civil works two weeks earlier and order a 12-month spare parts kit with the chargers. A single replacement connector cable took nine days to arrive in the first winter.

Fleet operators evaluating 60KW or 80KW DC charging piles can review the configuration used in this project at Soutya 60KW 80KW DC Charging Pile.

Industry Standards Referenced

• EN 50620:2017 — Electric cables for charging of electric vehicles. Defines flexibility, weather resistance, oil resistance, and sheath marking for charging pile cables, with rated voltages of AC 450/750V or DC 0.6/1kV. CEN-CENELEC
• IEC 62196 Series — Plugs, socket-outlets, vehicle connectors, and vehicle inlets for conductive charging of EVs. Part 1 covers general requirements, Part 2 covers AC interfaces (Type 1/Type 2), and Part 3 covers DC interfaces including CCS and CHAdeMO. IEC Webstore