BetterFleet R&D Plan

This page aligns BetterFleet R&D planning to the Product Ontology. It maps the source R&D themes, ideas, projects, and development activities onto the main domains and sub-themes used for product planning, then records where the current codebase already shows meaningful progress.

How to Read This Plan

• The primary organising lens is the product ontology domain and sub-theme.
• Significant means the current repos already contain clear implementation seams, active product workflows, or dedicated service/domain modules for the theme.
• Partial means there is meaningful groundwork or a narrow implementation, but not yet a broad or clearly productized capability.
• Limited means little or no material implementation footprint was found in the current repos beyond minor supporting artifacts.

Domain Summary

Domain	Current codebase position	Main implication for R&D planning
Smart Charging	Strong implementation footprint	Shift from foundational delivery toward better optimisation and orchestration.
Energy & Cost Management	Strong in load, site power, and microgrid; weaker in V2G and design optimisation	Prioritise grid-facing and cost-optimising extensions over base telemetry/control plumbing.
Operations & Dispatch	Strong in dispatch and readiness; mixed in optimisation-heavy themes	Expand from operational tooling into more decision support and optimisation.
Roaming & Shared Charging	Strong in tariffs, access, and payment flows	Continue hardening interoperability and commercial settlement.
Incidents & Notifications	Strong in rule-based incidents and notifications	Predictive and safety-focused themes still need dedicated R&D lift.
Reporting & Insights	Strong in reporting, dashboards, and cost/carbon views	Build higher-order analytics on top of an already meaningful reporting base.
Resilience & Security	Mostly enabling infrastructure rather than explicit R&D programs	Treat as a cross-cutting investment area rather than the main home for many source ideas.

Smart Charging

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Expected charging time and improved ETA to charge	Charger Control	Significant	bf-digital-twin exposes time_to_charge services and ml_models/serve_time_to_charge.py; Manage capabilities already describe live ETA-to-target-SOC in charger workflows.
Vehicle energy demand management and allocation	Load Management	Significant	Manage capabilities document load following, connector priority, vehicle-group priority, manual override, and site-limit control; Microgrid System Design and bf-manage-sitepwrmon show the supporting power-state substrate.
Parking and connector assignment optimisation as part of charge management	Load Management	Partial	Manage capabilities and bf-manage-core parking-space allocation paths show operational parking support, but a clearly defined optimisation engine for connector assignment is not yet evident.

Energy & Cost Management

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Depot demand optimisation and energy demand management	Site Energy & Infrastructure	Significant	Manage capabilities cover site load, circuit capacities, fail-safe behavior, and time-of-use limits; bf-manage-sitepwrmon translates site telemetry into domain state.
Energy management integration with charge management for cost saving	Site Energy & Infrastructure	Significant	Manage capabilities plus tariff and reporting flows show operational cost visibility tied to charging behavior, even if some optimisation logic remains policy-led rather than fully autonomous.
Microgrid management	Advanced Energy & Grid	Significant	Microgrid System Design is backed by broad bf-manage-core microgrid API, service, domain, and repository modules plus bf-manage-sitepwrmon microgrid-state translation.
Energy demand-side management with microgrid integration	Advanced Energy & Grid	Significant	The microgrid model, operating envelopes, site telemetry normalization, and load-balancing compatibility path are all present across Microgrid System Design, bf-manage-sitepwrmon, and bf-manage-core/src/service/microgrid/*.
Vehicle-to-grid and DER-export capability	Advanced Energy & Grid	Partial	The codebase contains V2G-oriented measurands, DER and peak-shaving capability states, and microgrid status/event paths, but not yet a clearly broad end-to-end V2G product capability.
Depot design and charge-point infrastructure optimisation	Site Energy & Infrastructure	Partial	bf-digital-twin, Depot Simulation, and legacy Plan service references suggest modelling capability, but the current checked-out repos do not show a clearly dominant infrastructure-optimisation product slice.

Operations & Dispatch

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Vehicle dispatch	Dispatch & Scheduling	Significant	Dispatch Reliability and Reconciliation, Manage capabilities, bf-manage-core/src/api/dispatch/router.py, and bf-schedule-creator show mature dispatch and schedule-ingest seams.
Dynamic routing and navigation	Dispatch & Scheduling	Partial	Schedule import, route/trip storage, route elevation, and digital-twin trip modelling are present, but a clearly live dynamic-routing engine is not evident.
Trip range required and dispatch energy estimation	Dispatch & Scheduling	Significant	Dispatch already uses digital-twin-backed energy estimation and viability logic; Dispatch Reliability and Reconciliation treats this as an active delivery concern.
Vehicle range remaining and on-route range remaining	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Significant	bf-digital-twin ships range-remaining model/service code (ml_models/serve_range_remaining.py, output_service/range_remaining/*) and bf-manage-web consumes it through src/services/digitalTwin.ts.
HVAC validation, battery preconditioning, and HVAC preconditioning	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Significant	bf-digital-twin/src/service/trip/service.py includes HVAC and preconditioning logic, and the shared service/reference model already treats these as active modelling concerns.
Parking management and optimisation	Depot & Integration	Partial	Manage capabilities describe depot layout, in-depot parking management, and parking-aware dispatch behavior, but the current footprint looks more operational than deeply optimisation-driven.
Remote vehicle diagnostics	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Partial	bf-telematics and the telematics migration work expose normalized snapshots, freshness, and health visibility, but not yet a dedicated remote-diagnostics product program.
Battery longevity and health	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Partial	bf-digital-twin and bf-bnl-schedule-analysis-compute show SOH and battery-model work, but the current local repos do not show a dominant end-to-end lifecycle-management product surface.
Battery warranty management	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Limited	Some supporting artifacts exist, such as vehicle settings/help text and charger log export for troubleshooting, but not a dedicated warranty-management workflow.
Autonomous vehicle integration	Fleet & Vehicle Management	Limited	Depot Simulation includes autonomous-behavior agents in the simulator, but the production product footprint does not yet show meaningful autonomous-fleet integration.

Roaming & Shared Charging

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Roaming access and shared charging interoperability	Network Access & Interoperability	Significant	Manage capabilities, bf-manage-roaming, and Manage help/reference pages cover roaming access groups, public charging behavior, and charger-level roaming journeys.
Integrated payment and billing system	Commercial Settlement & Shared Charging	Significant	bf-manage-roaming/src/router/AppRouter.tsx contains Stripe-aware payment/session flows, while bf-manage-core and Manage web already contain tariff and public-tariff models.

Incidents & Notifications

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Incident management, case handling, and escalation	Incident & Support Management	Significant	bf-manage-incidents is a dedicated incident intelligence service with rule engine, notifications, maintenance windows, and incident persistence.
Advanced predictive maintenance	Alerting & Detection	Partial	The codebase has strong incident, telematics, and fault-detection infrastructure, but no clear predictive-maintenance engine or model-driven maintenance workflow was found.
Fire safety	Alerting & Detection	Limited	Fire-related assets and fault references appear only as supporting artifacts; there is not yet a clearly distinct fire-safety product or R&D implementation slice.

Reporting & Insights

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Smart fleet analytics	Fleet & Charging Analytics	Significant	Manage capabilities already cover charging-session reports, vehicle charging summaries, charger performance, connectivity, EV load, and timeline analysis.
Sustainability and emissions monitoring	Cost, Carbon & Compliance	Significant	Manage capabilities and reporting help docs already support grid-emissions factors, tariff-backed cost reporting, and CO2e reporting outputs.
Operational dashboards and visibility surfaces	Operational Dashboards	Significant	Overview, timeline, charger, vehicle, and incident surfaces in Manage capabilities already provide a strong operational-visibility base for further analytics R&D.

Resilience & Security

Idea or activity	Sub-theme	Codebase progress	Evidence
Reliability, uptime, fail-safe behavior, and responsive technical operations	Platform Reliability & Safety	Significant	The source R&D narrative emphasizes reliability as core. The current codebase already contains incident workflows, fail-safe load management, stale-data handling, microgrid fallback policies, and site-monitoring infrastructure.
Fire safety	Platform Reliability & Safety	Limited	The theme is strategically important, but current implementation footprint is still sparse and mostly indirect.
Security and access control as an R&D moat	Security & Access Control	Partial	Manage has mature product access-control surfaces, but the source R&D plan does not yet translate this into a distinctive future R&D program.

Cross-Cutting R&D Operating System

These activities matter, but they are not product problem domains and therefore should be managed alongside the ontology rather than inside it.

Activity	Status in repo evidence	Note
Research prioritisation framework based on value, feasibility, and risk	Limited	The source plan calls for it explicitly, but there is little repo-native evidence of a stable cross-product prioritisation mechanism.
R&D governance across Product, R&D, and Business	Limited	Important operating need from the source plan; not yet expressed as a durable handbook artifact here.
Grants alignment with research intent	Limited	Mentioned in the source plan, but not currently visible as a maintained repo process.
R&D tax-credit evidence capture and month-to-month novelty tracking	Limited	The need is clear in the source plan; repo evidence for a repeatable evidence-capture workflow is weak.
Horizon scanning and market/technology monitoring	Limited	The source plan calls for ongoing PEST and technology scanning; no strong repo-native operating loop is yet visible.

Immediate Planning Implications

• Treat Smart Charging, Energy & Cost Management, Operations & Dispatch, Roaming, Incidents, and Reporting as areas where BetterFleet already has enough code footprint to justify focused moat-building rather than only foundational delivery.
• Treat V2G, dynamic routing, parking optimisation, remote diagnostics, battery lifecycle management, and predictive maintenance as second-wave themes that can leverage existing code substrate but still need shaped R&D projects.
• Treat autonomous integration, fire safety, and the R&D operating-system activities as research-first areas that need clearer framing, evidence plans, and narrower problem statements before major build investment.