We are in the next stage of the EV transition for fleets
By Matthew Waller, general manager, The Charge Scheme.
We are in the next stage of the EV transition for fleets
By Matthew Waller, general manager, The Charge Scheme.
For fleet managers and directors across the UK, sustainability has become a board-level mandate rather than a loose commitment. Carbon reduction targets, ESG disclosures and supply-chain pressures have pushed a zero-emission approach to the centre of fleet strategy. And of all the levers available to a fleet manager, none reduces emissions more directly than the transition to electric vehicles.
As of the end of March 2026, there were over 1.97 million fully electric cars on UK roads, more than four times the 2021 figure. The direction of travel is clear. But most organisations are still working out how to approach electrification without creating new costs, complexity or operational difficulty for drivers. In my view, that is where the conversation needs to mature. The vehicle question has largely been answered. The two questions sitting downstream of it, charging and reimbursement, have not.
The vehicle question is largely solved
Whatever your view of salary sacrifice schemes, it is hard to argue with their impact on UK fleet electrification. Well-administered schemes have given drivers access to new and used electric vehicles while costing employers nothing in cash terms, delivering an easy way for all eligible employees to drive electric, accelerating progress against carbon targets and improving the overall benefits package as an employer, without inflating budgets or adding administrative burden.
That part of the transition is now mature. The harder, less-discussed problems sit one step further down the chain: how drivers pay to charge their cars, and how they are reimbursed accurately and fairly when driving for business.
Charging is the cost the transition forgot
Public charging in the UK is simply too expensive. Drivers routinely pay 75p per kWh or more on ultra-rapid networks, several times the cost of charging at home, where some EV-specific tariffs bring the unit rate to a fraction of that figure. For drivers who live in flats, lack a driveway, or regularly travel long distances, this is the single biggest practical barrier to choosing an electric car. Survey data consistently shows that charging costs rank among the top concerns for drivers considering the switch.
For the fleet manager, the implication is straightforward. If the total cost of ownership becomes unfeasible for the driver, the transition stalls, sustainability targets slip, and the friction lands squarely on individuals who are left juggling different apps and tariffs to chase the cheapest charge, or quietly questioning whether the EV was the right choice at all.
There are solutions to this. Salary sacrifice charging allows employees to pay for charging from gross salary, recouping up to 50% of the cost in the same way they would on a salary sacrificed vehicle. Other employers are purchasing home chargers for employees, offering free workplace charging, or partnering with charging networks to deliver cheaper rates. Fundamentally, charging strategy is now a fleet-strategy decision, not an employee problem to be solved away from the office.
Reimbursement: the issue most fleets have not yet confronted
Business mileage reimbursement deserves more attention than it currently receives, because EVs have quietly broken the model that fleets have used for decades.
For petrol and diesel, HMRC’s Advisory Fuel Rates broadly approximate the true cost to the employee. With EVs, however, a flat rate collapses under scrutiny. The Advisory Electricity Rate, currently 7p per mile for home charging and 15p per mile for public charging, is broadly aligned with the cost of charging at home or at work. But it bears almost no comparison to the real cost of public rapid charging, which routinely sits north of 35p per mile.
Approved Mileage Allowance Payments, by contrast, are the flat rates HMRC sets for employees using their own vehicles for work, currently 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles. These frequently overpay drivers using their own EVs on business mileage, meaning the employer loses money in one direction while company car drivers using public chargers lose money in the other.
Some finance teams attempt to bridge the gap manually, reconciling spreadsheets, charge session receipts and odometer readings every month. But the audit trail is fragmented at best, and the methodology, if challenged by HMRC, may be difficult to defend.
This is not an issue that will simply disappear. Employees are becoming more cost-savvy during the cost-of-living crisis and will be aware that driving an EV can significantly increase their running costs versus a petrol or diesel car. Flat-rate reimbursement is therefore a quiet but powerful drag on the transition to EVs. It is also, in my experience, the single area where fleet managers most often tell me their existing process is no longer fit for purpose, yet it sometimes remains low on the boardroom agenda because the symptoms surface in payroll and finance rather than in the day-to-day operations of the business.
Whatever your view of salary sacrifice schemes, it is hard to argue with their impact on electrification
What good looks like
The principles required to fix EV mileage reimbursement are not complicated, even if the execution has historically been difficult. A modern reimbursement model needs to get three things right.
First, accuracy. Reimbursement needs to reflect the real cost of charging, distinguishing between public and home charging, applying actual cost where it can be evidenced and a defensible rate where it cannot. A flat Advisory Electricity Rate applied uniformly across all drivers is no longer adequate.
Second, simplicity. Fleet managers and finance teams should not be combing through charging data manually to calculate the correct reimbursement rate. A modern process produces a single, payroll-ready output each month with a full audit trail.
Third, compliance. HMRC explicitly permits reimbursement above the Advisory Electricity Rate where actual cost can be reasonably evidenced. The obligation is to build that evidence base in a structured, repeatable way that holds up under scrutiny.
Get those three principles right and reimbursement stops being a source of complaint and risk, and starts becoming a positive reason for more drivers to choose electric.
The fleet manager’s mandate is broader than it used to be
Ten years ago, a fleet manager’s role effectively ended at vehicle choice and service, maintenance and repair. Today it spans carbon reporting, employee experience, charging infrastructure, energy management, payroll inputs and HMRC compliance. The transition to electric has significantly expanded the brief, and the organisations that succeed will be those that treat electrification as a system, not as a series of independent decisions about vehicles.
Salary sacrifice has been an excellent forcing function for businesses to reach a critical mass of electrification. To engage the rest of the workforce, the approach is twofold: making charging affordable for every driver and rebuilding business mileage reimbursement so that it reflects how EVs actually work in practice. These are the problems that sit at the centre of the next stage of the transition, and the fleet managers who address them now will be best placed when that stage arrives.
