How to switch to an Electric Vehicle Fleet

By Paul Holland – Managing Director for UK Fuel at FLEETCOR.

Electric vehicles (EVs) aren’t just the future – for many people they’re the present. Ireland, as a whole, has incredible potential as a place for wide adoption of EVs, given its relatively small size and a population concentrated largely on its major cities/east coast. However, we are seeing that charging EVs can be expensive and charging points are rare outside of urban areas.

How to switch to an Electric Vehicle Fleet

With the 2030 cut-off for the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles looming, more companies are going to make the switch to fully-electric fleets. However, it won’t be a one-to-one replacement. The costs of buying and fuelling EVs are different to those of ICE vehicles, characterised by a large upfront cost followed by significant reductions in fuel costs.

Let’s take a look at the costs of switching to EVs and some of the ways that you can manage them;

Plan for everyday use

Using an EV commercially is going to have some major differences from using ICE vehicles. An ICE delivery vehicle that travels almost all day and runs out of fuel only needs to stop at a petrol station for a few minutes to be fully refuelled, but an EV could take anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours to fully charge depending on the vehicle charger. In some cases, you might find that you need additional vehicles to make up for time spent charging.

You should also take into account where charging points are located – perhaps if your companies drive regularly in rural areas then EVs won’t be a possibility until infrastructure improves.

In short, instead of replacing every vehicle in your fleet with an electric equivalent, look at what your fleet does every day and see what would need to happen for it to be feasible with EVs.

Understand the costs

EVs will typically cost more than their ICE equivalents when bought new and the market for second-hand EVs is limited, but growing. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland currently offers EV grants that can reduce the upfront costs, but these are unlikely to be around forever.

Depending on the nature of your fleet, you may also want to invest in charging points at your facilities. Public charging points are significantly more expensive than charging through a wall outlet and adapter (though still far cheaper than petrol or diesel) but charging EVs is a slow process that can be made much faster by using specialised charging points.

Manage your EV payments

Switching to EVs gives you an opportunity to make other efficiency savings, like saving on admin costs by using fuel cards instead of the time-consuming ‘keep your receipts’ or Pay & Reclaim model. There are providers on the market now that are leading the way in fuel and expenses cards for businesses, and have specialised cards for EVs right now to help businesses in the transition rom fossil fuels to electric.

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