Field notes on battery health, fleet electrification, and the economics of EV transit — drawn from The Volterra Weekly and the forthcoming book, The Intelligence Layer.
From The Volterra Weekly
The asset that decides whether a bus can run its block is the one transit agencies have the least visibility into. Reframing battery health as an operations decision.
Conflating state of health with state of charge leads agencies to retire batteries early and mistrust their fleets. Separating the two changes the maintenance economics.
Telematics tells you where the bus is. It doesn’t tell you whether the battery will finish the route. The gap — and what fills it.
Conventional BMS fault codes fire late. What the electrochemical precursors look like, and why catching them hours earlier matters.
How predictive health data reshapes replacement timing, residual value, and the second-life decision for agency budgets.
A practical checklist for evaluating battery health software — from data residency to OEM coverage to how outcomes are actually measured.
The full archive of The Volterra Weekly publishes on LinkedIn. Selected essays are being developed into the book The Intelligence Layer.
New issues of The Volterra Weekly publish regularly. Follow Volterra on LinkedIn to get them, or reach out to talk through any of the ideas above.