Fleet Alliance Group has reported huge growth in ULEVs (Ultra Low Emission Vehicles) on its funded fleet as a result of drivers looking to benefit from lower tax bills and more models coming to market.

Martin Brown, MD at Fleet Alliance

The firm says the number of ULEVs with carbon emissions of less than 75g/km grew by 112% in 2019, compared to 2018.

The big winner was Tesla, which saw a fifty-fold increase in registrations on the Fleet Alliance fleet of 37,000 vehicles.

The biggest mover at the executive end of scale was the Range Rover P400e PHEV, with registrations up more than 10-fold.

Martin Brown, managing director of Fleet Alliance Group, which comprises Intelligent Car Leasing, Intelligent Van Leasing and Neva Consultants, said the figures reflected the desire of company car drivers to move to less-polluting, tax-beating models.

He added: “We fully expect this trend to accelerate throughout 2020 thanks to the Government’s changes to the BiK scale charges which really incentivises drivers to go down an all-electric route.

“The Government announcement on company car tax last year was hugely significant for us and our sector and replaced the lack of clarity we’d seen in the previous two years.

“We fully expect to get confirmation of the new rates from the chancellor in the Budget in March, which allows fleets to forward plan again. The zero BiK rate for EVs should be a shot in the arm for electric vehicle sales while, as we have seen with our own fleet, hybrid vehicles, with the appropriate range, will be tax-beaters, too.”

He added that there could still be a short-to-medium term role for conventional engined vehicles, especially diesels.

“The new generation of cleaner RDE2-compliant diesels, with lower emissions of CO2 and nitrous oxides, will no longer attract the usual 4% diesel surcharge from April. This underpins our belief that diesel still has a key role to play in the future of fleet mobility,” he finished.