Mark Lovett Head of Commercial Vehicles (Europe), LeasePlan

As Head of Commercial Vehicles for the LeasePlan group, I’ve seen over recent months a significant increase in activity around electric light commercial vehicles / vans (e-LCVs). It’s apparent that during the global Coronavirus pandemic, not only have LCVs played a vital role in maintaining essential services and businesses such as online deliveries / couriers, pharmaceutical and front-line emergency support, but the need to reduce the operating costs of these business-critical vehicles has also awakened a real appetite for zero emission LCVs.

This is where e-LCVs come under the spotlight and it’s very noticeable just how many of our existing LCV fleet clients and prospects are reaching out to us - to enquire about the feasibility of them transitioning from traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) powertrains to either full electric or hybrid for their LCV fleets.

As a leading LCV lease provider, it behoves us to offer expert advice and guidance to our clients. Often the transition from ICE to e-LCV can seem somewhat scary for LCV fleet operators and fleet managers. In many instances, they’re venturing into unchartered territory - and there’s a fear that getting it wrong could have significant negative impacts on their fleet operations and overall business efficiency. With around 5,000 e-LCVs on our fleet, we believe that we’re well placed to provide the advice and expertise that is needed by our clients to help them on their ICE to e-LCV journey.

Well, I think it’s twofold: Firstly, many towns and cities across Europe have long been battling congestion and air pollution, and the pressure is further increasing as more ‘last-mile’ delivery services continue to take place in the urban centres. To tackle this problem, governments across Europe are stimulating the transition to electric driving in a push to achieve as many zero-emission miles as possible – and as fast as possible.

Secondly, there are numerous subsidies and governments grants in addition to tax credit and rebates encourage fleets towards a more sustainable future. With the various incentive programmes at a peak level now, it’s a great time to make use of the financial advantages. Some incentives are offered as a discount at the time of purchase of the vehicle and/or the installation of the charge point, in which case we at LeasePlan would help to co-ordinate this. Our job is to help you navigate your way through what appears at first, to be a bit of a maze!

We have produced an e-LCV white paper which will really help you to gain much more detail and information about the world of e-LCVs. Within that white paper, we go in to a lot of detail about the rebates, subsidies, grants and availability of e-LCVs. On the subject of e-LCV models, some fleets anticipate driver reluctance to e-LCVs. However, the reality is that the reluctance is often unfounded and driven more, by fear of the unknown. Within the white paper, we also talk about the feedback from e-LCV drivers and how almost two or three thirds of them say that they’d never want to go back to driving an ICE LCV.

• No tail pipe emissions
• Quick acceleration
• Almost silent driving environment in-cab: automatic driving mode
• Home & workplace charging means no time wasted at fuel stations

Added to the above advantages, research shows that drivers of electric vehicles have 16% reduced stress levels, so there’s clearly, not only sound business economic reasons to transition your fleet to ICE, but personal and social reasons for doing so too.

I hope I’ve given you a bit of a view from my perspective on the world of e-LCVs. If you would like to discuss please feel free to reach out to me or to your dedicated account manager.

I look forward to seeing more of your LCVs incorporated into our already growing e-LCV fleet of vehicles