Hello and welcome to your daily Charge Smart blog! Today, we will be taking a look at business fleets which could be a big driving factor behind EV sales.
Right, let's start off by reiterating some facts that we've covered before. EVs are cheaper to own than ICE cars. It’s not me just saying that, there is more than enough research around to prove that point. Including a piece of research that we covered a while back which showed how EVs are way cheaper to tax compared to ICE cars in Britain. The purpose of the study was to show companies that they should be swapping over to EVs for their business fleets.
Has your business considered switching to EVs?
There are increasing amount of incentives around to make buying EVs for business fleets much easier. That’s backed up by research which says that 88% of the UK’s largest fleets plan to order an electric car this year. It could just be the year for EV fleet cars because many mid-range electric cars now have a reasonable range of around 320 kilometres which makes them quite practical for real world use. Cities in the UK, Italy and Spain all have low-emission zones now which will further incentivize companies to change because no business will want to pay the daily rates for their fleet to pass through these zones.
Another reason why businesses should really be looking to switch to EVs is because of the lower ongoing costs. EVs are not only cheaper to service than ICE cars but also cheaper to refuel. It’s one of the reasons behind why UPS are adopting electric delivery vans for their fleet as we covered yesterday
Above: UPS' new van
Dealerships are forecasted to play a big role in driving these EV adoptions. Experts predict that car dealerships will be looking to install DC chargers to attract EV owners to dealerships so that they can buy add-ons for their electric car while it charges outside. They also predict that 20 minutes is the perfect balance when it comes to charging because the wait time is just low enough, it will provide more than enough charge to get home and it’s long enough for someone to be properly engaged by a salesperson! This means that a person could be lured into buying anything from accessories to a new EV while their current one is charging! There’s also that other little benefit of building relationships with the customer and creating commitment to a particular brand.
There’s another fancy piece of tech that is on the horizon for Europe, another little something that could make companies turn to EVs for their fleets. Currently, when you need to charge at a charging station, you pay with a card just like you would with anything else. But a new technology called Plug and Charge, the charge is a pun because it not only charges your car but it also charges your card for the amount. Plug and charge will identify customers and bill them through the charging cable. That’s the end of bank cards. This tech will make it far easier to manage payments for a fleet of cars along with the obvious benefit of saving time at the chargers. The first wave of this new tech has a planned roll-out for sometime this year.
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