News analysis Fear factor


Fighting EV misinformation is increasingly important for fleet managers, the AFP has said. Sean Keywood reports.


P


ushing back against EV misinformation is becoming a key task for fleet managers, according to the Association of


Fleet Professionals (AFP).


The organisation’s chair, Paul Hollick, said the industry was facing a ‘flood’ of misinformation, appearing in both traditional and social media.


He said: “Sadly, it seems to have become quite popular to create scare stories about EVs – that they catch fire easily and cannot be extinguished, that they will all run out of power simultaneously in cold weather and block motorways, that they are more environmentally damaging than ICE cars and vans, that current models will be worthless in a matter of years, and more. “Of course, there are now hundreds of thousands of company car drivers happily using EVs who know that this stuff is largely nonsense or based only on a few isolated instances, but there tend to be a handful of people in every organisation who will seize on these stories and share them with other employees.


“In most cases, there is nothing malicious about the actions of these


16 | April 2024 | www.businesscar.co.uk


“No doubt a century or more ago, there were people who stuck with


horses rather than drive a Model T.”


people. They just don’t know much about EV technology, believe what they read online, and are subsequently fearful of scenarios involving EVs that are vanishingly unlikely to actually happen.” Hollick said that handling these objections from their organisation’s


employees was becoming part of fleet managers’ workload as they progressed with electrification.


He said: “We’ve talked quite a lot in recent times about how fleet managers have spent the last couple of years achieving easy wins in terms of EV adoption and we’re now into a phase that is a much more of a grind. That means tackling more difficult areas such as van electrification and building operations in more geographically remote areas. “Part of this grind involves pushing back against EV misinformation. Fleet managers within the AFP are gathering and sharing EV facts and figures that they can use whenever one of these scare stories is raised by one or more employees. It’s become a process of reassurance. “The overwhelming experience of most fleets is that once drivers start using EVs, they love them and few would return to an ICE vehicle. The objections tend to come from those with limited or no exposure. It’s not unknown for fleet managers who are successfully running hundreds of EVs to be solemnly warned by a colleague that electrification will never work.”


Hollick said that, although there was an assumption that misinformation would decline over time as EVs became more common, there was also a potential danger that some would continue to believe the misinformation.


He said: “In those instances, there is little that fleet managers can do other than present them with the facts. No doubt a century or more ago, there were people who stuck with horses rather than drive a Model T.” Hollick’s comments echo those made late last year by AFP deputy chair and National Grid fleet manager Lorna McAtear, who speaking at a Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum seminar said: “The spread of misinformation probably does more damage to all fleet operators trying to do their job than anything else, because it means we spend over half of our time explaining to our drivers that EVs don’t catch fire at the drop of a hat, that batteries don’t degrade as much as [people say]. “We spend more time having to do full handovers to each of our drivers just because of the myths that are out there in the press.”


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