Ohme mobility director Peter Mcdonald ponders over the high-profile news stories from the past few months – and thinks there’s been one glaring omission…

Peter McDonald, mobility director, Ohme

There’s no question that it’s been a busy summer. Euro 2024, a new government, the Olympics – there’s certainly been no shortage of headline-grabbing events. What there hasn’t been however, is any change to further government support on the purchase of EVs. And, with EV sales up 16.6% and overall fleet sales up 59.6% for the first half of this year, there’s no question that business drivers are doing the majority of the heavy lifting when it comes to UK EV sales.

With increasing numbers of fleet managers embracing EVs for their cost-saving benefits, what could be done to convince those outliers who have yet to make the switch?

Van fleets are the most obvious examples of those, and BEV van sales stand at just 4.7% in the first six months of 2024, a drop from 2023. While some high-profile fleets have made the switch, it’s clearly not enough. But, thankfully, new products are coming and I expect that market share to grow in time.

Waiting for new EVs in the car arena isn’t a problem, with new brands and new models arriving all the time into showrooms. Even better is that the mileage range of those new EVs is growing all the time, too – the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 with its 84kWh battery has a range of up to 354 miles, for example.

Those longer ranges will enable drivers to do more charging at home and less at public chargers, reducing costs for fleet managers considerably. That’s just one of the reasons why providing home EV chargers for drivers is so important in terms of cost savings and also lost revenue with time on the road.

At home, using a smart tariff from Octopus or Ovo, a driver might pay as little as 7p/kWh for their electricity, whereas on the road that could be more than ten times that figure for an ultra-rapid charger. It doesn’t take a genius to work out the huge potential running cost savings on offer with home charging.

In line with the latest issue of Fleet World exploring ‘health’, we can explore how ‘health’ covers a number of different factors. There’s obviously the health of the cars and, with servicing, there are obviously reduced costs with EVs compared to ICE models. Not only does this – and those home charging running cost savings just mentioned – improve the financial ‘health’ of your fleet but it also means reduced downtime for you and your drivers, improving working efficiencies too.

However, there’s also the health of your drivers to consider with driving an EV. Numerous surveys of EV drivers have shown that they are less stressed than their ICE-driving counterparts. One survey by DS Automobiles found that 38% of those driving EV or hybrid cars felt less stressed than when they drove a petrol or diesel car. When the average Brit spends four years behind the wheel during the course of their life, that could make up a lot of removed stress, just for swapping the type of power under your right foot.

And if a driver knows they can always charge at home at the end of a day and also start their shift in the morning with a full charge – rather than having to find a public charger – then that leads to an improved outlook on running an EV as well – especially so when driving an LCV.

Furthermore, there’s another ironic side benefit for driving an EV too. The Health and Safety at Work Act and Working Time regulations mean that employers need a driving for work policy to minimise road risk, including mandated breaks from driving. With an EV of course, those breaks and any down times are almost enforced by recharging requirements, which in turn helps the health of your driver compared to an ICE vehicle.

Now well into the second half of the year, it will be interesting to watch how EV sales develop for the rest of 2024 – both in the UK and other European markets. For fleet managers viewing the calendar and possibly even with half an eye on 2025, two things are certain: EV sales will continue to make up an ever-increasing market share and fleet managers will be under ever more pressure to include EVs in their fleets if they haven’t done so already.

It may have been a busy summer, but the light will continue to shine on EVs for some time yet.

Peter McDonald is mobility director at Ohme. Prior to his current role, he spent two decades working for automotive manufacturers including Nissan, SEAT and the wider Volkswagen Group.