Availability of charging is the biggest barrier to fleet electrification, a major new study of fleets has revealed.

Arval’s 2025 Mobility Observatory Barometer shows 41% of UK fleets say there aren’t enough public charging points, 39% have no charging available at their employees’ homes and 25% have no chargers at their company offices.

Overall, 70% of companies mentioned at least one challenge related to charging points – and Arval said the findings show access to charging is a widespread issue.

John Peters, head of Arval Mobility Observatory in the UK, added that the answer can lie in the hands of employers to some degree.

“If there are no charging points at offices or at the homes of employees who have off-road parking for a charger to be fitted, then companies could take action to resolve these problems.”

But he also said that much remains outside drivers’ and fleets’ control.

“While the public charging infrastructure is growing, it remains patchy in places, and where employees live in terraced housing or apartments, installation of on-street charging is very limited although that situation is starting to improve.”

Other constraints mentioned in the research include the purchase price of electric cars being higher than internal combustion engine equivalents (30%), model ranges being too restricted (23%), limited driving range (18%) and employee resistance to electric cars (16%).

Peters said: “Again, these are barriers that we believe are starting to disappear quite quickly. The price of acquisition of electric cars is now becoming very close to the same as ICE equivalents, especially when leased.

“As for model ranges being too limited, there are some potential gaps in general availability – such as proper 4x4s and pickups – but again, there are models appearing that should help to resolve these issues.

“It’s also interesting that fewer than one in five fleets mention range as an issue. Just a few short years ago, we’re confident that this would’ve been a major concern, but it appears that the 250–350-mile range typically found on fleet electric cars today is sufficient for most needs.”

Lastly, Arval noted the similarities between the UK findings, the rest of Europe and globally.

“Looking at most of the constraints mentioned in the question, there is limited variance between here and the averages found across other countries. It appears that the issues being faced by fleets when it comes to electrification are quite similar everywhere.”

What constraints are you facing when using electric cars

UK                   Europe            All countries

Not enough public charging points             41                    37                    37

No charging at employees’ homes              39                    29                    29

Purchase price higher than an ICE car       30                    32                    34

No charging points at company offices      25                    30                    31

Model ranges are too limited                      23                    26                    27

Driving range constraints                            18                    20                    22

Employee resistance to electric cars          16                    15                    18

For the 2025 edition of the Arval Mobility Observatory, 8,061 company decision-makers across 28 countries were interviewed by an independent research company, Ipsos, out of which 300 interviews took place in the UK.   The companies in scope operated at least one vehicle. Of the interviewees, 53% were companies with less than 1 to 99 employees, 27% were companies with 100 to 999 employees and 20% were companies with 1,000 employees or more.