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out of electricity on every single journey it’s ever done. There are no charge points anywhere and you have to spend two hours sat at one to get 20 miles down the road.”
The truth will out “T
he biggest one is that EVs catch fire. Then, every single vehicle that’s broken down at the side of the road is an EV, because it’s run
“You can get a little bit bombarded if you spend any time on social media,” says Caroline Sandall- Mansergh, manager for consultancy and channels at Alphabet. “You may not follow the extreme
Over the hill
That is Arval’s senior consultant, Ben Edwards, wearily reciting some tired old electric car twaddle – the types of anecdotes most fleet operators have, by now, probably heard a million times. EVs are far from alone in being sucked into the culture wars, and they are subject to the same black and white extremities of opinion, however heated or ill-informed, as anything else with an incendiary social media base. A glance at SMMT registration figures (EVs are up 35.2% year-to-date and fleet has a 58.9% overall market share) proves BIK of between 0% (2020-21) and today’s 3% is a more effective influence on drivers than spurious scare stories, but the naysayers still have sway, and should be ignored at your peril.
22 | May/June 2025 |
www.businesscar.co.uk Above: Ben Edwards, senior consultant, Arval
Though EV misinformation is alive and well, some believe its zenith has passed, at least in fleet. A lot of that is because the vehicles and the taxation regime are now better established, while the cabin fever that set in during lockdowns was a breeding ground for the worst of it. “I think it was really bad just before and after Covid,” says AFP chair Paul Hollick, who adds that the organisation first published a driver Q&A document to counter misinformation around four years ago. “In our world, you were at that infancy of company cars moving to electric, and a lot of people weren’t really investing a lot of time or understanding in what the vehicles could do. At that time, there was almost an anti-EV brigade
EV misinformation is nothing new, but dispelling it is now part of a fleet manager’s day job. Jack Carfrae asks why tall stories are so prolific and how to handle them.
accounts, but it filters down in slightly softer ways through mainstream media. Some of the facts just get completely abused and they’re not representing real truth – or they’re taking such a narrow view of a very particular use case in very particular circumstances.”
Alina Kolyuka/
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