By Paul Hollick, chair, Association of Fleet Professionals

It’s probably not controversial to say the US war in Iran has turned out to be not quite the fast and easy success President Trump hoped. Gains have been few but a huge negative impact has been felt over a lot of the world in the form of much higher oil prices.

Whether the military aspect of the conflict is over or not – a question unresolved at the time of writing – pump prices are likely to stay high for months and even years, a fact that impacts directly on the operating costs of fleets running internal combustion (ICE) engined cars and vans.

Oil shocks of this kind are a periodic risk for fleets, dating back to at least the OPEC embargo of the early 1970s, and have sometimes proven influential on how fleets operate, at that time prompting interest in smaller vehicles with better fuel efficiency. However, it was historically impossible to avoid the fact that moving people or goods always meant relying on petrol or diesel, and there would sometimes be unpredictable pricing.

This time around is fundamentally different though, because it is now possible to go electric. Over the last few months, there have been some signs this is happening in response to the situation in Iran, at least in the consumer sphere. Brego has identified a sudden jump in used electric car sales as a direct result of pump prices, for example, but has something similar happened to fleets?

The simple answer is no. While there certainly have been discussions within the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) about the advantages of running electric vehicles at this moment in time, there have been few or no signs of sudden, widespread changes in vehicle acquisition.

There are several obstacles. Firstly, fleets tend to have three- to five-year procurement strategies but, more pertinently, we are now at a point in time when much of the low-hanging fleet electrification fruit has been picked. Company car drivers who can charge a vehicle on their drive and choose a model that meets their range needs are probably already driving an EV. It’s arguable that most of the easy choices have been made.

Instead, we’re in a phase – and the distance between current new EV sales and the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate reflects this – where further progress is about covering some hard yards. For example, there remains no widespread, simple charging solution for the roughly half of the population who live in terraced houses or apartments. Developments such as cross-pavement cable gullies and our own shared charging scheme provide at least partial answers, but these options are very much in their infancy. Especially, progress in the electric van sector remains slow, simply because the available models often do not meet the range, payload and charging needs of operators. This is changing but relatively slowly.

However, these difficult problems do not mean the current oil shock hasn’t, in a more subtle manner, facilitated the long-term fleet shift towards EVs. While vehicle operators haven’t made instant decisions in response to unexpected jumps in pump prices, the increases have served as a stark reminder that the consistently low cost and strong reliability of power supply from going electric are huge advantages. As some of the remaining issues associated with electrification are resolved in the coming years, vehicle operators are primed more than ever to make that move.

For more information about the AFP, click here.