Fleet Manager: Fuel, EV Charging, and Tolls

A fleeter does far more than order vehicles. They arbitrate between purchase and leasing, track maintenance schedules, handle claims, monitor consumption, negotiate fuel discounts, and report to the CFO. The role is inherently cross-functional: it spans mobility, accounting, regulatory compliance and CSR. When everything is spread across multiple vendors, the administrative burden explodes: reconciling three statements, managing three customer support teams, and integrating three accounting feeds can easily consume the equivalent of a half-time position for a fleet of around thirty vehicles.

That is why part of the market has organized around outsourced fleet management: an independent operator (not tied to a manufacturer or leasing company) takes over day-to-day operations on behalf of the business. FATEC, based in Marseille with over 30 years of experience, positions itself as France's leading independent fleet manager and recently partnered with Holman to extend its international reach^[1]. For these firms, the core promise is exactly that: a single view of fuel, maintenance, tolls and EV charging, the same promise a well-built in-house back office must deliver.

The multi-network fuel card is the fleet manager's baseline tool. Rather than a single-brand card that sends drivers out of their way, it covers multiple station networks: fewer detours, less wasted time and, most importantly, consolidated consumption data. Everything else is built on that data: consumption tracking, anomaly detection, TCO reporting, and French fuel excise tax (TICPE) recovery.

On a fleet that is electrifying, the challenge doubles. An electric vehicle does not "fill up" like a combustion engine: it charges at the depot, on a public charger, or at a customer site. If charging is managed in a separate tool, the fleet manager loses the overall picture and can no longer make a fair cost-per-kilometre comparison between a combustion vehicle and an EV. The right architecture is a single platform that handles both fuel and charging: one statement, one set of accounts, one TCO per vehicle.

The same logic applies to the toll transponder. Managed in isolation, it generates its own statement, its own accounting integration, its own disputes. Consolidated on the same platform as fuel and charging, it becomes a single line on the dashboard. The gain is not measured in cents per toll transaction but in management time and clarity, exactly what an overstretched fleet manager needs.

A vehicle's total cost of ownership goes well beyond its purchase price: acquisition, fuel or energy, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, taxes, road tolls, and management overhead^[2]. To compare two vehicles fairly, or decide when to renew, fleet managers think in five-year TCO, not the monthly lease payment on the brochure. But that calculation is only as good as the data behind it: one missed fill-up, one charging session paid on a personal card, one toll wrongly allocated, and the TCO becomes a rough estimate.

That is where telematics changes the game. By capturing mileage, real-world consumption, driver behaviour, and trip duration, telematics turns an opaque fleet into a manageable system. Market solutions routinely claim 15–25% fuel savings through theft detection, route optimisation, and eco-driving^[3]. The exact figure depends on the operating profile, but the principle holds: what is not measured cannot be managed. A fleet manager who can see consumption by driver, by vehicle, and by week can act: eco-driving training, replacing a fuel-hungry vehicle, flagging an out-of-area fill-up.

Telematics alone, however, is not enough: it needs to talk to the management platform. That is the advantage of an integrated suite over a black box bolted on the side. Our comparison of the top fleet management software solutions explains what separates a tracking tool from a genuine management platform; Greenway's fleet management platform connects cards, charging, road tolls, and reporting in a single environment.

Fleet greening is no longer a PR option. France's Mobility Law (LOM) of 24 December 2019 requires companies operating more than 100 vehicles to follow a progressive greening trajectory: 50% clean vehicles in renewals by 2030, with full decarbonisation of the fleet targeted by 2050^[4]. For a fleet manager, this means making a call at every renewal cycle: combustion, hybrid, or full electric, and planning the charging infrastructure to match.

Low Emission Zones (LEZs) tighten the constraint at the local level. Eleven French metropolitan areas restrict the most polluting vehicles based on their Crit'Air sticker; in Greater Paris, Crit'Air 3, 4, 5, and unclassified vehicles have been banned since 1 January 2025, with fixed-penalty fines for non-compliance^[5]. In practical terms, an unclassified van making city-centre deliveries is an operational liability. Fleet managers must know their fleet's Crit'Air breakdown and plan renewals zone by zone.

Beyond compliance, fleet reporting feeds directly into CSR strategy and, for companies in scope, CSRD reporting. Scope 1 CO₂ emissions, the share of renewable energy in charging, kilometres driven on electric: these figures cannot be invented; they are calculated from fuel, EV charging, and telematics data. A back office that consolidates all of this natively saves the fleet manager hours of manual work and reduces the risk of errors in disclosures.

This is also where Greenway's approach makes sense for a fleet manager: the card suite and fleet management software bring fuel, EV charging, and tolls into unified reporting, and every transaction generates a 1% contribution under the 1%ForAll® programme, a measurable, traceable impact that slots naturally into CSR reporting requirements. For the fleet manager, it is an impact data point that connects to everything else without any extra collection effort.