Feature
anxiety quip, often (but not exclusively) from older company car drivers reticent to peel away from petrol and diesel.
“I’ve still got drivers out there who say, ‘I’m never going to choose an EV, because I can’t do my 400- mile journey from Southampton to Scotland in one go’. It’s like, ‘how often do you actually do a 400- mile journey in your petrol or diesel vehicle without stopping, because even if you do, you should be stopping anyway’.”
“It’s incredible how many drivers have an electric vehicle and don’t have any understanding of how to charge it,” adds Hollick. “Normally, when they start, they’ll just run an extension cable out the window. There’s no real forethought. Unfortunately, we don’t work and live in a world where there are lots of people that actually plan properly. Some just select a vehicle because it looks cool and it’s cheap to tax, rather than thinking about the implications of how to actually run it.”
The consensus is that traditional company car drivers and those that have latched onto salary sacrifice now, generally, know the ropes, and that misinformation largely bounces off them. Work remains with drivers whose position means EVs are relatively new and unfamiliar, though. “What we’re working with now are fleets where it’s job-need drivers or lower grades,” says Edwards. “They’re starting to choose EVs, because they’re getting cheaper and coming onto choice lists, but drivers aren’t well-educated. They’re not going out and doing their research, and we’ve had complaints like, ‘my vehicle’s not fit for purpose because, as soon as I take my foot off the accelerator, it brakes’. That’s obviously regenerative braking, and it’s a feature of the car, not a fault.”
Fightback Above: Paul Hollick, AFP chair 24 | May/June 2025 |
www.businesscar.co.uk
Seasoned fleet operators probably did not expect fact checking, myth busting and explaining the blindingly obvious to be such a major part of their job, and it could easily be written off as a sign of the times. But painful though it is, there is a silver lining, as the role now has more clout at board level. “It’s created more responsibility for the fleet manager, but it’s also elevated their role,” says Hollick, “I don’t think we can forget that the decarbonisation agenda means a professional fleet manager, a fleet director or a head of fleet now gets airtime at the board on a regular basis.” As to how to counteract the bogus, Edwards believes that circulating concise information is, these days, far better than the “10-15-page guides” devoured by early EV advocates, while drawing attention to the plethora of cheap new models cannot hurt. Hollick advises against waving away the cynics: “I don’t think you can afford to be too dismissive. You need to embrace the misinformation, turn it around in the right way from a positive perspective and make
sure your community is relatively well educated. If one person is going to raise something that you think is completely misinformed, I think you’ve got to assume that others out there are doing the same.” He recommends sending weekly or monthly fleet bulletins to drivers and other employees, asking your leasing company (if you use one) for advice and involving HR and the board, who “will want the employee base to be well educated anyway, so you’d be pushing an open door.”
It is a tough line to tread, because fleet managers must also avoid the equally damaging position of EV evangelist. As Edwards says, “the idea that an EV will solve everything is wrong – it isn’t going to suit every single driver or every single application,” so any counterargument to a phoney storey must be empirical and nuanced.
Luckily for fleet managers, the facts are on their side. People might still do it, but it is hard to form a credible argument against 3% BIK.
Above: Peter McDonald, director, Ohme
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53
