Businesses are increasingly taking EV charging into their own hands as fleet electrification plans outstrip the development of the public charging network. Research by 360 Media Group (published in the Fleet Outlook 2022 report) has found that 91% of companies are looking to install workplace charge points to recharge their own company cars and vans, as well as support employees with privately owned EVs, who do not have off-street parking where they could accommodate a home charger.
The need to find a workable charging solution issue is particularly acute for van fleets, where as many as 70% of drivers do not have off-street parking at home. While e-LCV adoption is still in its infancy, 360 Media Group found that 78% of fleets with electric vans are returning the vehicles to the depot to recharge, so they can be confident that vehicles will have a full charge when they start the working day.
This is a costly strategy, given the expense of installing charge points and potentially upgrading local grid connections, but the alternative is lost productivity if drivers have to stop and plug in their e-LCV. Only 17% of van drivers report having a slow (3-5kW) or even a fast (7-22kW) charger close to their homes.
Despite this investment in workplace chargepoints, the limited range of e-LCVs, which suffers under load carrying, means more than half of e-LCV drivers are forced to top-up vehicle batteries at public charge points during the day.
Fewer than one-in-five fleets, however, are looking to make their workplace chargers available to the local community, with businesses reluctant to allow unsupervised, out-of-hours access to their premises, and the cost of adding payment systems to chargers proving too high.
360 Media Group’s survey findings are echoed by the new study from the UK’s Electric Vehicle Energy Taskforce (EVET), which reports into the UK Government’s Office for Zero Emission Vehicles.
The taskforce says the UK will need 500,000 public charge points by 2035, compared to the 30,000 public chargers that exist today. Its modelling indicates that the number of chargepoints needed by 2035 ranges from 253,000 to 661,000 with a central estimate of 490,000. Crucially, these have to be built before drivers switch from internal combustion engines to “gain consumer confidence” in battery power. EVET forecasts that there will be 200,000 depot chargepoints by 2035, serving 14% of fleet vehicles.
Interestingly, EVET’s research found that EV drivers without home charging prefer local on-street chargers, while drivers who have not yet switched to BEVs prefer the idea of fast local charging hubs.
EVET also forecasts that the UK will need about 60,000 en route rapid chargers to support longer journeys, and says all public charge points will have to be visible, accessible, connected, secure and interoperable to gain consumer confidence.
“Full interoperability entails a network of chargepoints enabling customers to access any public charging station without entering a subscription, offers non-discriminatory access for customers with existing subscription with other EMPs [e-Mobility Service Provider] facilities value added services to customers, and allows for customers to roam using a single identification or payment method," it said.