23. April 2026

New calculator supports the planning of electric commercial vehicle fleets

Reiner Lemoine Institute develops an easy-to-use, hands-on service for businesses

Graphic: outline map of Austria with a central network icon and various energy and transport icons around it

Reiner Lemoine Institute (RLI) has released the STELE Calculator, a new online tool designed to help companies plan their fleets of heavy-duty and commercial electric vehicles. For the first time, the tool enables a low-threshold, practical estimation of key energy and charging parameters for individual routes. The calculator was developed as part of the STELE platform. Within this framework, RLI scientists are working as part of a consortium for the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund on an exchange platform for integrating electric mobility into power grids.

The calculator processes vehicle- and mission-specific data and calculates, among other things:

the energy requirement per route,
the battery charge level upon return to the depot,
the charging requirement and the required charging power at the depot,
as well as the charging requirement and charging time en route.

The calculations are based on transparent energy models. These include determining driving energy requirements from consumption data, plausibility checks on the inputs, and the automatic derivation of average speeds and usable battery capacity. For charging planning, both the time spent at the depot and a selectable charging power for intermediate charges are taken into account.

The tool is designed for companies with commercial vehicle fleets that want to assess the energy requirements of electric trucks or plan charging infrastructure.

STELE is being developed by an international project consortium on behalf of the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund. The platform was initiated by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Innovation, Mobility, and Infrastructure and is being implemented on behalf of and with funding from the Climate and Energy Fund.