Maximizing Fleet Uptime: What Causes a Vehicle Battery to Drain?
Perhaps no call is more annoying to a fleet manager than the dreaded report, “Hey, I think my battery died.” When your vehicle battery dies, you lose time and money while dealing with a relatively preventable (and deeply time-consuming) problem.
Battery depletion and downtime are deeply frustrating and can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost time, reduced efficiency, and maintenance costs. Here’s the good news: With the proper software, you can understand what causes a vehicle battery to drain, prevent this maintenance issue, and maximize your fleet’s uptime.
What Causes a Vehicle Battery to Drain?
Many circumstances can lead to a car or truck’s battery depleting or operating at reduced efficiency. These include:
- Accidentally leaving an electronic component on, such as lights.
- A parasitic draw, meaning that another component—like a car radio or phone charger—is drawing battery power and creating a state that makes it difficult for your battery to shut off and recharge.
- Loose or broken connections that interfere with the battery recharging.
- Problems with other car parts, like the alternator.
- Bad weather or humidity that may damage a battery’s connections or overall health.
- Using a car too frequently (multiple quick trips) or not often enough. Either of these states may make it more difficult for your car’s battery to recharge.
Finally, car batteries become less efficient over time and more likely to die. In many cases, it is simply the result of ordinary wear and tear. When this happens, you may find that your vehicle does not start and your battery needs replacing.
How to be Proactive About Vehicle Battery Health and Prevent Drain
Most fleet managers have found that built-in tools to their car batteries are inadequate. Generally speaking, these tools only alert managers about battery problems when it’s too late to prevent them. While most cars come with some battery trackers, they are often located under a series of menus that may make them difficult to access.
To truly stay on top of your fleet’s battery health, you’ll need a telematics device that can collect vehicle health information in a centralized platform, like Zubie Fleet Connect.
Once your telematics device is installed, you will be able to access a variety of data about your battery, including its current charge. Armed with this information, you can make appropriate decisions about what vehicles are ready for certain trips, when to replace batteries, and receive alerts for preventive maintenance. This real-time data can ensure that you always know exactly how your fleet’s batteries are performing.
What Telematics Can Offer For Your Battery and Vehicle Health
An integrated telematics system can offer comprehensive battery and battery health tracking. You can then compare this information against the overall performance of all batteries in your fleet, enabling you to make benchmark comparisons when gauging the health of a vehicle’s battery.
The best telematics systems are highly customizable. Ideally, you should be able to create custom alerts that push out to you. These alerts will save you the trouble of manually digging through your vehicle’s data and ensure you always know exactly when a critical maintenance problem demands your immediate attention.
Furthermore, telematics should help you identify the source of a battery-related problem. Depending on how a vehicle operates, telematics may be able to tell you if there are problems with a battery’s overall storage capacity, the connections going to that battery, or its ability to recharge. You can then make more informed maintenance and investment decisions, allowing you to diagnose problems faster and quickly get a vehicle back on the road.
Finally, telematics data can integrate into other business management systems. This allows you to access data directly in your existing systems and ensures that you can customize the integration to fit your needs.
Partner With Zubie
At Zubie, we get it: Your battery is everything. That’s why we have built a system designed to ensure maximum efficiency and enable you to track the overall health of the vehicles that power your fleet. With Zubie, you can identify sources of battery drain, preemptively deal with problems, and ensure that your fleet stays on the road—safely—for as long as possible.
Ready to learn more about the benefits of our battery health tracking and telematics? Contact Zubie today.