‘Making the Move: How Some of New Zealand’s Leading Organisations Have Gone Electric’ is a Drive Electric white paper released at the EVs and Beyond Conference on Waiheke Island, Auckland.
“Once a company has transitioned their fleet to electric, they never want to go back,” Drive Electric board member and Custom Fleet NZ country leader Michelle Herlihy says.
Custom Fleet has been helping a variety of companies make the transition and Herlihy says the feedback is unanimous.
“As much opposition as you might have upfront, every employee seems to be delighted by the fact that they’re now driving an electric vehicle (EV) and when we ask those employees for their feedback, I don’t think we’ve found one that would go back to driving a petrol powered car after having had an EV.”
The white paper provides practical insights into how organisations can successfully optimise their fleets and transition to EVs.
Key issues include managing higher upfront costs via purchasing or leasing, gathering all-important metrics on fleet use, organisational change management, vehicle selection, and managing charging infrastructure, route planning and range anxiety.
While upfront costs and an imbalance in fringe benefit tax (FBT) are key considerations, overall the white paper reflects that the journey towards EVs can be rewarding.
Herlihy says it’s critical to have executive support for the switch.
“Most of those businesses have run this as a change management project and I think that’s critically important, because it’s all about changing people’s minds,” she says. “There are new ways of thinking about a vehicle, so the more information you provide to employees, the better the successful rollout of the project,” she said.
Herlihy says people can be emotive about the type of vehicle they drive but she’s found many myths can be debunked with data.
“We hear stories of employees saying, ‘I can’t drive an electric vehicle because I drive a thousand kilometres a week’, but actually what we’re finding through analysis of actual driving data that those employees are often driving less kilometres.
“Using real data actually helps employees with range anxiety and that goes hand in hand with looking at their charging solution as well.”
Charging is a significant topic covered in the white paper.
“We have seen a mix of businesses choosing to invest in their own infrastructure and that can involve more steps when you’re dealing with a building that you don’t own… But so far, we haven’t seen any landlord push back on investing in infrastructure within buildings,” Herlihy says.
“Property owners are now starting to see that having that infrastructure will attract tenants and businesses – although it’s critical to do load management analysis on the amount of electricity the building can take and what impacts the chargers have on that load management.”
Herlihy says that the lack of Government action does not reflect the growing desire of businesses to be part of the EV revolution.
“In 95% of customer meetings that I attend now EVs are on the agenda. I think people are feeling more comfortable around the vehicles. Range anxiety is starting to disappear. In most cases, the upfront cost is simply the biggest issue.”
Herlihy says cost will remain a barrier until price parity is achieved with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
While the proposed feebate scheme has been shelved, Herlihy says an FBT break for businesses planning to use EVs has been sought for some time.
Herlihy believes government incentives are needed to make EVs more affordable and to signal to global manufacturers that New Zealand is supporting the EV evolution.
