Call for urgent support to avoid failure of electric van sales

Van operators are fearful that a lack of support for the take-up of operationally challenging zero emission LCVs will lead to failures to reach Government targets.

Fully electric vans currently account for a 5.6% market share, significantly below the 10% year-end target set by the UK Government's ZEV Mandate.

The Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) has warned that incentivising electric van demand, and ensuring the vehicles are more capable, are two factors that must be delivered to help the auto industry hit zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) targets,

AFP chair Paul Hollick said believes the Department for Transport (DfT) appears to be keener to help manufacturers offset limited demand for electric vans than to find ways to dramatically encourage fleets to purchase them, and warned "that creates an unsustainable situation”.

Hollick warned that many fleets, having found during the pandemic that they can practically extend replacement cycles by several years, are planning to hang on to existing diesel vans until the situation surrounding electric vans improves.

“The problem with electric van sales is not so much that they are lower than expected, as seen in the electric car market, but that they appear to have stalled altogether around the 5% mark. 

“Fleets are effectively refusing to buy them for practical reasons and forcing manufacturers to make increasing percentages of vehicles under the ZEV Mandate doesn’t solve that core problem.”

The AFP argues that only a step change in technology improving the range and payload issues with electric vans would resolve core fleet objections, so potential Government action lay instead in areas such as infrastructure, regulation and financial incentives.

"The Van Plan launched with the BVRLA and other parties a few months ago explained the demand issues that are behind slow electric van uptake – insufficient public and private charging infrastructure, regulatory barriers, and affordability and availability of suitable product,” Hollick (pictured) told AM's sister publication Fleet News.

“Again, as mentioned in the Van Plan, we need to find ways of rapidly making more chargers offering cheap power available in more places and more accessible to vans, as well as resolving the ongoing issues around licensing and operation of 4.25 tonne vans,” said Hollick.

“Improving these scenarios would potentially create at least some impetus.”

Hollick believes that a similar carrot to low company car tax rates may be necessary for electric vans to generate the kind of momentum that Government wants to see. 

“Businesses may need to be given a genuine financial benefit to offset the operational problems they experience around electric vans,” he said.

The Government announced in the autumn Budget that it will provide £120 million in 2025/26 to support the purchase of new electric vans via the plug-in vehicle grant.