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Electrification of fleets is already well underway, and electric vehicles will continue to be the future direction of travel, so if you’re not getting ready now, you need to. That was the headline message about progress at the 2026 Fleet Electrification Forum, organised by Transport + Energy.
The Fleet Electrification Forum brought together fleet managers and others working in the sector to share best practice for decarbonising fleets. This year the discussions included cars, vans, trucks, buses, coaches and specialist vehicles ranging from refuse collection to 4×4 utility vehicles. Suitable EVs are now available in the majority of vehicle segments, although coaches are a challenging area. Just in case there’s any doubt about the opportunity for suppliers of EVs, Openreach has 24,000 vehicles.
Solutions for charging electric fleet vehicles are generally always found, but panellists at the event highlighted that charging is an area with some of the greatest challenges. Depot charging is the ideal solution, but some operators don’t have depots, and if they do, grid upgrades for new charging infrastructure can take a long time, as well as being expensive. In one of the polls during the event, 47% of delegates cited ‘grid capacity and connections’ as the biggest barrier to fleet electrification.
Another solution is home charging, when EV tariffs can help to bring down the cost of charging significantly, but 40% of UK properties don’t have off-road parking – and this is the case for many fleet drivers – so home charging isn’t an easy option for lots of fleets.
That leaves public charging, which is much more expensive than home or depot charging, and most public charging bays don’t easily accommodate large vehicles such as vans. One potential solution to the charging challenge is shared depot charging.
Another recurring subject during the event was the ZEV mandate. It’s been reported that the government is considering weakening the target of 80% of new cars to be zero emission by 2030 down to 50%. The overwhelming response from speakers was that the UK’s EV and charging industries need certainty so they can plan investment for the future, and continual changing of the EV targets doesn’t provide the certainty needed.
It’s the same story for Europe: Chris Heron, Secretary General, E-Mobility Europe gave a summary of the situation in Europe, where the EU started reconsidering EV sales targets before the UK, against a backdrop of the market for EVs throughout Europe being very varied. Certainty is now needed for investment, but a decision is likely to take many months. In the meantime, while European countries have protracted debates, China is selling more and more EVs to Europe (and the UK).
Chris also provided a helpful reminder for any politicians who may have forgotten – aside from reducing emissions, EVs reduce our dependency on oil, improving our energy security – which is presumably a good idea with ongoing volatility in oil-producing regions such as the Middle East.
There have been improvements to the process of applying for upgraded grid connections; Dan Clarke from the Energy Networks Association (ENA) explained about the Transport Connections Guidance Tool, which is an online resource that fleets can use to start the process of applying for an upgraded connection.
Vehicle to grid charging, allowing fleets to charge when electricity prices are low, and to sell energy back to the grid when prices are high, so helping to balance the grid and reduce carbon, was seen by a number of speakers as finally being commercially available in 2027.
Westminster City Council and the London Borough of Islington both explained the progress being made with electrifying local authority fleets, with Westminster having achieved the electrification of 70% of its fleet, ranging from 3.5 tonne street sweepers to 27 tonne HGVs. It was confirmed that one of the most important ways to convert people to EVs is to get them to actually drive one. And Ed Yendluri from Westminster City Council provided a much-needed reminder that local air pollution is still a major issue in areas such as London, and EVs are an important solution to this issue.
Sticking with London, Transport for London has 9,000 buses, and has currently electrified 3,000 of them. Air quality has also been the key driver for TfL. Lisa Dipnarine from TfL confirmed that the “only way forward is EVs”, and also made the wider point that there needs to be more focus on developing skills for the UK’s EV industry.
Although progress in the area of fleet electrification is generally going well, one sector with more challenges than most is the emergency services. Effie Vraka from the Metropolitan Police explained how there is a need to convert 5,300 vehicles to EVs, and although the fleet primarily operates in the London area, the vehicles drive the equivalent of 5.7 times around the equator every day. Therefore charging is more of an issue than most people might imagine.
Over recent years most drivers have realised that the future technology for cars will be electric, and, albeit at a slower rate, the same applies to vans. Specialist commercial vehicles, such as an electric refrigerated van, are also becoming increasingly viable as fleet electrification expands into more demanding applications. However the majority of people have refused to believe that HGVs could be battery electric-powered, but this is now happening. The charging infrastructure for electric HGVs definitely appeared to have been forgotten about a few years ago, but this is now finally being addressed. The Zero Emission Road Freight programme is trialling 300 electric HGVs, some covering over 500 miles per day (outperforming OEM range predictions in some cases) and eHGV charging sites are now finally appearing. Not surprisingly, the panel said that the government needs to lay out a direction of travel for the electrification of HGVs to give certainty for investment in infrastructure.
Although not directly focusing on fleets, an interesting session was whether drivers should bother taking a driving test with a manual vehicle or skip this and go straight to a test for automatic/electric vehicles. Lorna Lee, the AA’s PR and Public Affairs Campaigns Manager, said there has been an eight-fold increase in driving tests in automatic cars since 2007, and noted that the pass rate is lower for people taking the test in automatics, perhaps reflecting that these candidates aren’t as confident.
If you pass in an automatic vehicle in the UK and then want to get a licence for a manual car, you have to take the test again, with all the associated wait times, whereas in Germany you can just do 10 hours of instruction in a manual followed by an assessment.
Certainty about future government policy was regularly quoted at the Fleet Electrification Forum as being essential for planning investment, but despite what the government is doing or isn’t doing in areas such as the ZEV mandate targets, the industry is getting on with fleet electrification by itself, and progress is being made. However it’s not just a case of a fleet manager procuring vehicles; charging has to be factored in, which may be straightforward, but in some cases this may require more complex solutions. Because of the range of factors involved, in order to accelerate progress, the majority of speakers highlighted the importance of one key thing: collaboration. Which is what the Fleet Electrification Forum is all about. The event brought together fleet managers with a wide range of industry solution providers in the areas of transport and energy, and beyond, with the forum content aiming to address the main issues faced by the industry, but the event was also characterised by an energetic buzz around networking.
Paul Clarke
