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Misinformation about EVs is placing significant demands on the time of fleet managers, it has been said.
National Grid fleet manager Lorna McAtear said that misinformation was leading to concerns about EVs among drivers, which managers were having to work hard to address.
McAtear, whose comments came during a Westminster Energy, Environment and Transport Forum seminar on the next steps for EV deployment and charging infrastructure, said: "The spread of misinformation probably does more damage to all fleet operators trying to do their job than anything else, because it means we spend over half of our time explaining to our drivers that EVs don't catch fire at the drop of a hat, that batteries don't degrade as much as [people say].
"We spend more time having to do full handovers to each of our drivers just because of the myths that are out there in the press."
According to McAtear, a lack of EV understanding is not only a problem being seen among drivers.
She said: "We've touched on the cost of insurance, we've touched on battery degradation, we've touched on residual values of vehicles. All of these come down to a lack of education and understanding.
"Why is the rising cost of insurance there? Well quite frankly they got it wrong in Covid and they got caught out, and they're trying to recoup the losses they had from a supply chain that couldn't deliver, and I don't blame them for that.
"What that's also meant is when we've got all this misinformation out there, the insurance companies don't actually understand EVs and how they work, they don't understand that there is a value in the batteries even if something does happen to that vehicle. They don't realise that things don't have to be written off and scrapped as much as they do."
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