Don’t expect any changes to the speed of electrification adoption because of the 2035 delay, says Paul Hollick, chair of the Association of Fleet Professionals.

Paul Hollick, chair of the Association of Fleet Professionals

It’s unsurprising that Rishi Sunak’s announcement that moved the electric car production deadline to 2035 was met with a high degree of consternation and annoyance across the fleet sector.

Large numbers of car fleets have been working diligently towards 2030, expending huge amounts of time and money in order to make electric cars work for them and their drivers. That planning involved working to a schedule that has been largely undertaken in direct response to government policy. As anyone who works within fleet knows, electrification has been the dominant subject in our sector. In fact, to such an extent in recent times that it has sometimes felt like the only matter that anyone was discussing – to the point where there has been little air left in the room for anything else. So, moving the goalposts has not gone down well on the whole.

However, now the dust has settled, there seems to be a consensus across the AFP that the Government’s change will actually have little effect on the rate of electrification.

There are both practical and ethical reasons for this view.

From the demand side, the main push for adoption of electric company cars has been a highly favourable Benefit-in-Kind environment – and there is little indication that this will change. Indeed, it is arguable that the new deadline could mean that lower rates could persist for longer. Drivers will continue to choose EVs because they bring the lowest tax bills by far.

Then there is the fact that manufacturer schedules for electrification are highly unlikely to change. We now know that the ZEV mandate is in place, meaning car supply will change over to electric at the same speed as in the run-up to 2030. Also, production plans for most major manufacturers for the rest of the decade are already set in stone and are very much heading in the direction of EVs, thanks to the 2035 deadlines that already exist in many European countries. Conversely, these schedules mean supply of petrol and diesel vehicles will start to dry up and there are quite likely to be accompanying price rises and supply issues as they become something of a niche.

Beyond these measures, it is important to remember that many businesses and organisations have an ethical belief in making their activities zero emission and company cars form a large part of those commitments. Most have set individual targets but the majority that I have seen are ahead of 2030 and, again, these are unlikely to change in response to the Government’s announcement.

Finally, there’s the fact that fleets have found car electrification relatively straightforward in most respects – and that EVs have proven, over the last few years, to be an excellent company transport choice in the same way as their petrol and diesel forebears. Yes, there are issues to overcome – from availability of on-street charging to unpredictable RVs – but these should be resolved in time as the car parc moves towards electrification and we expect the situation to improve well ahead of 2030.

Of course, there is an elephant in the room that I’ve largely ignored in this piece so far – electric vans. Here, the 2035 deadline delay makes much more sense. The experience of AFP members so far is largely that neither the charging infrastructure nor the vehicles themselves are quite ready for mass adoption and having some extra time is likely to ease the process on both fronts.