Captive audience
Many of the fleet industry who were gathered in Milton Keynes for the Great British Fleet Event 2025 were keen to find out more about EVs. With some expert speakers focused on that specific subject, they weren’t disappointed
The second session of the Masterclass conference at the Great British Fleet Event 2025 opened with Vicky Edmonds, CEO of EVA England, highlighting the need to address misinformation around EVs – and how people within the industry can help spread the (true) message.
She explained that EVA England represented all EV drivers and aimed to lobby the Government to make all things within the EV ecosystem better. She added that while the organisation is fully behind the transition from ICE vehicles, it is also aware of the issues holding progress up. One of these issues is misinformation – everything from EVs catch fire to “You never see an EV in the outside lane of the motorway”. To combat these tropes, EVA England aims to push positive stories.
“We try to rattle the cages of MPs and the Government and work a lot with the industry and the network to bring about change,” she explained. Current efforts include lobbying authorities to reduce the VAT on public charging, simplify the application and consent process for cross-pavement technologies, restructure and expand the workplace charging scheme, and for residential tariffs on the public road network.
Edmonds also confirmed that EVA England is working to try and improve charger access for disabled people, as well as those living in flats or who don’t have a driveway or nearby power source.
The second session of the Masterclass conference at the Great British Fleet Event 2025 opened with Vicky Edmonds, CEO of EVA England, highlighting the need to address misinformation around EVs – and how people within the industry can help spread the (true) message.
She explained that EVA England represented all EV drivers and aimed to lobby the Government to make all things within the EV ecosystem better. She added that while the organisation is fully behind the transition from ICE vehicles, it is also aware of the issues holding progress up. One of these issues is misinformation – everything from EVs catch fire to “You never see an EV in the outside lane of the motorway”. To combat these tropes, EVA England aims to push positive stories.
“We try to rattle the cages of MPs and the Government and work a lot with the industry and the network to bring about change,” she explained. Current efforts include lobbying authorities to reduce the VAT on public charging, simplify the application and consent process for cross-pavement technologies, restructure and expand the workplace charging scheme, and for residential tariffs on the public road network.
Edmonds also confirmed that EVA England is working to try and improve charger access for disabled people, as well as those living in flats or who don’t have a driveway or nearby power source.
“We try to rattle the cages of MPs and the Government and work a lot with the industry and the network to bring about change”
Efficiency drive
Next up was GBFE regular Dan Lawrence-Eyre, co-founder and COO of Diode. He focused on the need to minimise charging downtime in order to improve fleet efficiency during the transition process. He explained that his company worked with a number of companies – including Athlon, Northgate and NatWest Group – to help bring about changes for the better and increase overall fleet operations when it comes to BEVs.
Lawrence-Eyre spotlighted that some fleets can lose up to £17k for a driver every year who is sat waiting for their vehicle to be charged. The best way to get around this issue was, he said, to firstly identify the vehicles – specifically talking about LCVs –suffering with downtime issues. Then to use telematics data to study the charging stats, including what type of charging it was (home, workplace, public destination or public en route). Lawrence-Eyre stated that home and work charging were less of an issue, but with public destination charging it was important to identify dwell locations, check the charging times and assess the options at these locations. For en route charging, the Diode man said investigations into charging costs, locations and options were essential to see where efficiency improvements could be made.
Some vans might not be ready to switch to EV – and that’s ok, said Lawrence-Eyre. It’s more important to look at all the variables at play before making any big switches. “We need to nudge fleets buy showing them the vehicles that CAN shift to EV,” he concluded.
Tales from the fleet
Last up in the electric vehicles session was Rob Simister, fleet operations director of Centrica, owner of British Gas and home to the third largest fleet in the country, after BT Openreach and Royal Mail. Simister told the audience that the Centrica fleet included 2,500 cars as well as 8,000 commercial vehicles and that there had been a big investment in battery electric vehicles in both areas. However, just 33% of the vans are electric, partly because 70% of Centrica van drivers do not have a driveway and therefore have to rely on the public charging network. “A lot of the drivers are ‘mature’, which means asking them to consider a new approach of looking after their van,” explained Simister. Because of the difference to a diesel LCV, a great deal of training around driving and charging is required in order to get the best efficiency gains possible from the drivers.
He pointed to the management layers that need to be considered when it comes to switching drivers from ICE to EV. While home charging might be cheaper than running a diesel van, when you consider public charging costs, it’s more expensive. Simister also stated that, as customers, the likes of Centrica needed to voice their opinions to OEMs. “Ideally, the vans should be able to charge at similar speeds to cars,” he reasoned. “That would mean less time off the road charging and quicker charging times so that they are not taking up space on chargers when cars are waiting.” He added that it was worth remembering that some fast chargers doesn’t always work at the speeds advertised and people – including those in government – “would do well to remember that”.
