The Great Big Green Week 2025
Dated: 09 Jun, 2025
For this year’s Great Big Green Week, we thought we would look at what businesses can do to ready themselves for the upcoming ZEV Mandate milestones.
Below is a table showing the current targets for amount of Electric Vehicles sold each year that manufacturers need to meet to avoid fines. As the years go on it will become harder to procure Diesel and Petrol vehicles, if the target is met in 2030, there will only be 30% of new vans sold that are Diesel or Petrol.
So with this in mind, how can your Fleet get Electric Ready?
First of all, just evaluate your fleet and try and find where the easy victories are to convert a driver to an electric vehicle. Are there some areas that are rich in public charging stations? Do you have ideal locations to install your own chargers at offices or depots?
Have any drivers in your fleet already expressed an interest in driving an electric vehicle?
Take those quick and easy victories to bring your electric vehicle percentage up.
It is important you encourage your drivers during transition periods. You do not want to make it seem like an enforced change, so how you address the swap overs to electric can be a key point in preventing any potential kick back.
Electric vehicles offer plenty of improvements and exciting features, plus they typically come with the most up-to-date tech and interior the manufacturer has to offer. It should be an easy sell, with the only main draw back being the range and charging time, but we will look at how to tackle that next.
Educate, educate, educate! It is imperative that you educate your drivers, both practically, and to put any concerns at ease.
If one concern is the range of the vehicle, let’s look at what that driver typically covers in a day. How much does that cut into a particular vehicle’s range? With ranges increasing consistently, to the point where some electric vehicle models are within 100 miles of their diesel counterpart, there will be a model that will work for that driver.
If charging times are a concern, again let’s look at the working day. If you get a vehicle that can cover 200 miles on a full charge, how many miles is the driver doing per day? With most models, a rapid charge for 30 minutes is usually enough to get it up to 80% from 10%, so setting aside 15 – 30 minutes at the end of every other working day to re-charge the vehicle will keep you moving.
If your driver covers a large area and has a lot of miles on the clock, the Highway Code suggests that drivers should be taking a 15 minute break after 2 hours of driving. What can you do in that 15 minutes? Rapid your charge your vehicle, potentially back up to 80% in that time.
Once you are in a position where your drivers are comfortable with the idea of driving electric, and you have a suitable vehicle for the miles they cover, you must then educate them to drive that vehicle. Electric will be new to most people, and potentially so will driving an automatic transmission. Take the time to get the driver trained up, to learn the controls, the functions, the technology, how to charge the vehicle, what regenerative braking is and how to get the most out of it.
If you train your drivers to get the most out of the electric vehicles, you’ll be saving yourselves money in the long run, through both reduced charging and reduced incidents.
The evidence is there to show that electric works for many fleets nationwide. Our friends at Mitie recently in December 2024 added their 6,000th electric vehicle to it’s fleet! That is nearly 75% of their fleet that is now electric! They will not have to keep a nervous eye on the ZEV Mandate yearly targets, as they are more than ready for an electric vehicle dominated market.
Through the above steps and dedication, they were able to at first identify the quick and easy transitions to electric to bump their numbers up, they encouraged and created a positive culture around swapping to electric, and most importantly they educated their drivers from the get-go to put any nerves at ease.
At Fleetmaster we created a host of E-Learning courses for Mitie, some of which were vehicle specific electric vehicle training courses. These courses taught the drivers what the drive modes for that specific vehicle do, how to use them, how to maintain the vehicle, how to get the most out of the range and how to charge the vehicle. Those courses are often paired with our driver safety E-Learning packages, covering various topics such as Appropriate Speed Choice and Vulnerable Road Users. With over 11,000 E-Learning courses completed, Mitie have ensured their drivers are educated, safe and ready to step into the electric vehicle, before it’s even been delivered.
Use this evidence as motivation in your fleet transition. Not only is it possible to keep up with the mandate changes, it’s possible to get years ahead!
