E-company car fleets | about subjective and objective eMobility entry and usage barriers

While politics and industry postulate new plans and future visions for e-mobility every week, many companies find it difficult to transform their company car fleet to pure battery-electric vehicles. In the working group “e-Company Car”, together with our partner companies Acondas and Acterience as well as eMobility experts from the industry, we have been investigating entry and usage hurdles to introducing and operating e-company car fleets and developing targeted solution approaches at the company level.

Since October 2020, we have conducted multiple virtual workshops and interviews and have identified and discussed numerous hurdles. In a further virtual working session in June 2021, we have summarized and prioritized the individual hurdles at the company level from the perspective of different stakeholders:

  • Initially, the e-company car user needs information and training
  • The use of an e-company car requires radical behavioral changes, for example in driving habits or charging methods
  • The challenges for fleet managers are to identify user- and charging profiles for the fleet and to establish suitable charging infrastructure
  • Corporate support functions and process owners must calculate the total costs of e-vehicles and charging infrastructure, and manage electricity cost billing
  • Interfaces to a wide range of external service providers and frequently changing political framework conditions pose additional significant challenges in the e-transformation of the fleet

 

As the result of increasing political and social attention to the topic of eMobility, some of these hurdles are expected to diminish or disappear completely until end of 2022. The rapidly growing supply of electric vehicles and the expansion of a public network of charging infrastructure are helping to reduce preconception about electric vehicles and make it easier for companies to switch to an electrified company car fleet. Our expert panel identified initial approaches to how longer-term hurdles could be reduced:

  • Emotional hurdles and a lack of willingness to change behavior on the part of the user can be reduced through a systematic change approach including incentive schemes
  • A uniform, standardized set of rules in the form of an e-car policy is needed to address (technical) issues relating to the use and charging of e-vehicles throughout the company
  • The role of the fleet manager is evolving (“innovative fleet manager”) into a central point of contact in the company for all questions related to the acquisition, use and billing of e-company cars and charging infrastructure

 

With these initial solution approaches at our disposal, our “e-Company Car” working group will continue after the summer break. The next stop is to further elaborate solution hypotheses before developing a holistic solution approach to overcoming the identified barriers to entry at the Euref campus in Berlin in October. If you have any questions about Receeda, our work in the field of eMobility and sustainability, or our consulting approach, please feel free to contact us at info@receeda.com.

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