Why we built fleet management into Volta
Six months after launch, a logistics manager from Manchester sent us a message. His company had just taken delivery of twelve electric vans. He'd downloaded Volta, found a charger, and asked: 'Can I see what my whole team spent last month?' The answer was no. We built fleet management because that question kept coming.
The problem nobody was solving
If you run a small fleet, you know the friction. Your drivers are scattered across 40+ different UK charging networks, each with its own app, each sending receipts to different places. One driver uses Instavolt, another Gridserve, someone else plugs into a BP Pulse terminal. At month end, you've got spreadsheets and screenshots and no idea whether you're being charged fairly or whether idle fees are eating your margin.
Fleet management software exists, sure. But most of it treats EV charging as an afterthought. A checkbox in a broader expense platform. We decided to flip that. Make charging the centre of the story, and build fleet controls around how drivers actually work.
Consolidated billing and real visibility
In Volta, when you set up a fleet account, every driver on your team shows up in a single dashboard. You see journeys, costs, and network breakdown. More importantly, you see the true total cost: the per-kWh rate plus parking, idle fees, and taxes combined. That preview happens before your driver even plugs in, so you understand what you're paying for.
Receipts flow into one place instead of ten. Cost-centre reporting lets you allocate charging spend to different departments or projects. If your delivery fleet and your sales team use separate budgets, you can track them separately. No manual reconciliation. No lost receipts wedged in a van glove box.
Policy without the policing
Here's what surprised us during testing: fleet managers don't want to spy on their drivers. They want guardrails. One operator told us his drivers were idling at chargers for hours after the battery was full, racking up fees. He didn't want to know where they were. He wanted them to stop doing that without being told.
So we built policy controls. Set spending limits per driver per month. Restrict which networks your team can use (if you have a fuel card deal with a specific provider, lock everyone to that). Flag idle fees before they happen. The driver isn't monitored. The system just helps them make smarter decisions in the moment.
Why we didn't build it wrong
During development, we had a choice. We could have tried to become a payment processor ourselves, or negotiate direct tariffs with every network operator. We didn't. That way lies complexity and use problems. Instead, Volta unifies what's already there. Your drivers use the networks they need. We consolidate the billing view. The charging networks handle the actual transaction and the rates stay competitive because we're aggregating, not gatekeeping.
Same logic with cost-centre reporting and policy controls. These live in Volta. The charging networks don't need to change. Your existing infrastructure stays intact. We just add a layer of sense on top.
Who actually uses this
We've seen fleet management adopted by delivery companies, taxi operators, and facilities managers running corporate EV charging programmes. Smaller fleets (5 to 50 vehicles) find the most value. Large operators with their own charging infrastructure sometimes don't need it. But most businesses in that middle band are running Volta now, either for the consolidated view alone or with full policy controls active.
One rideshare operator in London told us the cost-centre breakdown helped them realise they were paying 18p per kWh on one network and 22p on another. They adjusted their route preferences. That single insight paid for the premium tier.
The feature that almost didn't ship
We nearly launched fleet management without cost-centre reporting. Thought it was too niche. Customer feedback changed our minds. A facilities manager at a university said her finance team needed to charge departmental coaching shuttles against different budgets. Didn't want a workaround. Wanted it built in. We added it two weeks before launch. It's one of the most-used features now.
That's the thing about building for a real problem. You don't need to guess what matters. The customers tell you.
If you run a fleet, even a small one, have you thought about what your actual charging costs are across all the networks your team uses? Volta won't make charging free, but it might make it transparent in a way nothing else does.