Fleet managers shouldn’t have sole responsibility for deploying electric vehicles on corporate fleets, according to legal firm Burges Salmon, with new technology necessitating co-operation with other departments.

Cross-department collaborations are vital for improving EV uptake, according to Burges Salmon.

Speaking at the Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum in London, Ross Fairley, the firm’s partner and head of energy, power and utilities, said fleets will play a significant role in growing the UK’s electric vehicle sales, as well as for supplying vehicles into the used market.

“We need fleets to propel the growth in electric vehicles,” he said. “This is a massive challenge for large corporates; they have tackled green energy, but this is going to be a massive part of their corporate social responsibility mix, and their responsibility to the market.”

However, he explained, this still falls on the traditional fleet manager. “The way I see it, is it’s as much the energy manager’s responsibility in those companies, and that’s the way people should be looking at this going forward. Those two entities or persons need to be brought together to accelerate the roll-out with fleets.”

Fairley added that there was a significant appetite among fleets to switch to electric, but he expressed concern that it’s no longer demand that’s the biggest problem facing the sector. “There seems to be a blockage to getting the vehicles those fleets need,” he said. “If we’re not careful, everyone is going to be racing towards EVs, but manufacturers are not producing enough of them.”