A recent webinar brought together three perspectives on fleet electrification — strategic, operational and data-driven — to examine how the business case for EVs is holding up as
A recent webinar brought together three perspectives on fleet electrification — strategic, operational and data-driven — to examine how the business case for EVs is holding up as energy costs, residual values and incentive frameworks continue to shift.
The panel featured Edwin Kemp, director at EY-Parthenon, Mel Creedy, EV business development at Northgate Mobility, and Abhinav Vasu, AVP solutions engineering EMEA at Geotab, chaired by Simon Harris, editor of Fleet World.
Kemp opened by arguing that the EV business case can no longer be a single total-cost-of-ownership calculation. With energy prices, residual values and incentives all more volatile than in earlier adoption phases, he called for a scenario-based approach that stress-tests charging mix, utilisation, downtime and policy shifts.
EY-Parthenon research suggests fleet electrification could unlock cumulative operating cost savings running into the hundreds of billions across Europe by 2030, driven by lower energy costs and reduced servicing spend – though Kemp stressed those savings depend entirely on how a fleet is operated, not on the vehicle alone. He pointed to charging mix, duty cycles, downtime and residual value tools such as battery state-of-health certification as the variables most commonly underestimated.
Kemp also framed electrification as an ecosystem opportunity spanning OEMs, charge point operators and finance providers, not just individual fleets.
Creedy brought this into operational focus. Northgate’s approach centres on understanding each customer’s fleet in granular detail and building readiness before pressure to transition arrives — which she termed as getting “match ready”.
Driver engagement, Creedy argued, is as much about sentiment as practicality: identifying EV champions within a driver cohort, tailoring education and giving honest advice about which routes or duty cycles simply aren’t ready yet.
Because Northgate retains asset risk, it can flex quickly if a customer’s circumstances change — including reverting to diesel where necessary. Creedy was candid that the first five or 10 EVs in a fleet take disproportionately more work than the next 50, and that fleets succeed by investing there first rather than avoiding it.
Abhinav Vasu outlined how Geotab’s telematics data, drawn from a global base of connected vehicles, largely confirmed one concern and reassured on another.
Vehicle suitability, the source of much pre-transition ‘range anxiety’, is not showing up as an operational problem: daily mileages sit comfortably within modern EV range.
Driver engagement is a different story — average daily depth of discharge across European fleets sits at just 48%, meaning EVs are frequently returning to depot with half their battery unused, roughly halving the fuel, emissions and financial return the transition was meant to deliver.
A separate efficiency study across seven European cities found London ranked last for EV and diesel efficiency alike, due to stop-start traffic; and fast DC charging was shown to degrade batteries roughly twice as fast as slow charging (3% versus 1.5% annually). Trucks, by contrast, showed far higher discharge rates and stronger returns, attributed to fixed routes and operational discipline.
All three speakers converged on a similar conclusion: the technology case for fleet electrification is largely proven, but the transition succeeds or fails on operational discipline and driver engagement rather than vehicle capability.
Kemp urged fleets to treat electrification as genuine value creation rather than a compliance exercise.
Creedy emphasised change management and honesty about what isn’t ready yet.
And Geotab’s data underlined that closing the ‘confidence gap’, not the technology gap, is where the next phase of fleet electrification will be won or lost.
