EV running cost difficulty down to charging issue, claims Chevin boss

Thursday, October 17, 2013 - 12:00
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EVCharging

DIFFICULT: EV running costs hard to track

Fleets operating electric vehicles face a key challenge in accurately calculating their running costs, a fleet software specialist has claimed.

Ashley Sowerby, Managing Director of Chevin, believes fleets have difficulty measuring costs unless they are only ever charged from a dedicated public, office or depot-based point.

“It is a central tenet of effective fleet management that all costs should be measured,” said Mr Sowerby.

“Even if charging an electric vehicle is only a matter of a few pounds, it still needs to be accurately recorded.

“The fact is that, unless you use a dedicated charging point that has some form of individual metering, it is very difficult to measure the cost of charging an electric vehicle.

“Certainly, we are unaware of any car that will tell you an individual charge figure in kwh.

“If a driver uses their own EV on work business, then Revenue and Customs suggest using the full AMAP rate of 45 pence per mile but if an employee plugs a company car into their domestic power supply, how do you work out what it has cost for them to charge the vehicle?

“Certainly it won’t be obvious from their domestic power bill.

“Compared to the levels of reimbursement that are needed if you were looking at an average petrol or diesel car that may be around £80 per tank, the numbers are very small but they obviously still need to be accurately tracked from the point of view of both reimbursement and whole life costs.

“This is probably not an insurmountable problem but another one of several that need to be overcome if fleets are to adopt EVs in large numbers.”

Image courtesy of NCDOTcommunications, with thanks.

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