What is incredible about this response is the missed opportunity that public charging networks are facing due to the complexity that fleets face accessing and using the solution. This latest research identifies that over 70% of car fleets and 76% of van fleets are intending to order electric vehicles during 2022.
Currently just over half of fleets surveyed claim that they use public charging, leading to a steep knowledge curve for those fleets that are accelerating their investment in EVs.
However, 85% agreed they would use public charging if there was a single solution to access multiple chargepoints with one single bill.
The 200 fleet managers questioned are responsible for around 12,000 vehicles and nearly 70% of the respondents are the ultimate decision makers for the fleets.
This research highlights some of the challenges that fleets face when considering their electrification strategies.
Billing has proved particularly challenging for fleets. With 75 public charging networks in the UK there is a challenge with apps, cards and membership schemes that a fleet manager doesn't have time to organise. Having a single solution to bring all these bill's together is a significant time saver. Plus it enables management of VAT invoices to ensure that accounting is done properly.
"What is incredible about this response is the missed opportunity that public charging networks are facing due to the complexity that fleets face accessing and using the solution." Said Niall Riddell, CEO and Co-founder of public charging specialist Paua. "Paua's electric fuel card solution seeks to overcome these challenges enabling fleets easier access to public charging"
Public charging solutions, like the one offered by Paua, are an important part of a fleet electrification strategy. It enables fleets to free themselves from depot and home-based charging solutions. Public charging can avoid expensive depot and grid upgrades. It enables fleets the ability to consider electrifying alternative routes and to consider smaller battery vehicles.
But the key to use of public charging for fleets is ensuring that drivers have a simple solution enabling them to find the correct chargepoint, initiate a charge event (either with an app or with an RFID card) and then for a single bill to end up with the fleet manager.
Finding charging points is particularly crucial at this early stage as drivers need to know that the charger they are headed towards is the right speed for the time they have available (50kW+ for a 20-30 minute charge, 7kW for a couple of hours), has the right connector for their vehicle and is available to charge (not broken or in use).
Paua is a technology lead clean technology business solving the payment solutions of public charging for fleets. For every average fleet vehicle transitioned to electric 5tonnes of CO2/year are not emitted to the atmosphere. Removing public charging barriers for fleets and enabling more electric vehicles into fleets is Paua's mission. 54% of potential electric vehicle drivers indicating that public charging is a barrier to their adoption of the technology.
The Paua electric fuel card enables drivers to find, charge and pay for charging via mobile app or RFID card.
The app provides filters and dynamic data to ensure that the 3,000+ chargepoints that Paua covers provide the latest data to the driver. Covering popular networks such as Mer, Osprey, Char.gy and Fastned fleets and drivers can gain confidence in public charging.
Paua is a member of the Tech Nation Net Zero 2.0 programme, part of the Geovation accelerator programme and will be appearing at COP26 with the Greenbackers 26 for COP26 fundraising programme as well as at the SSE sponsored Decarbonisation summit.