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BUSINESSCAR ROUND TABLE: Talk of the town - taking care of the environment

Date: 10 December 2013   |   Author: Jack Carfrae

Can you go green by accident?

Attendees were asked whether it was possible to make a fleet environmentally friendly without necessarily intending to, focussing on cost rather than cutting CO2. 

The EST's Caroline Watson said: "We win fleet people round by making a financial case. If they can't save money and reduce emissions then they can't do it."

Hyundai's fleet boss Martin Wilson said drivers at least were now more game for low-CO2 models: "Drivers, I think, are quite prepared now to consider lower-CO2 cars and ones with less power. The stumble into one means the other happens."

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Telematics: a solution to cutting CO2?

Hyundai's fleet boss Martin Wilson suggested that in addition to driver training, telematics programmes were becoming ever more popular with big businesses in their quest to cut emissions. "A lot of bigger fleets are using telematics and certainly looking at driver training," he said. 

Arval's Mike Waters added: "Particularly with workhorse fleets, telematics is useful. If it's more of a perk fleet then it's a harder discussion. However, we do have a couple of customers who have gone down the safety and security route rather than 'we need to know where you're going'."

Georgina Smith, fleet administrator at Healthcare at Home, voiced her concerns about buying into such a package too early because the rate at which the technology was escalating meant it could quickly become redundant.

"I'm flooded with emails every day with people trying to sell it to me, but it looks better every time. If I buy it now, what am I missing?" she asked.

Smith added that it seemed a worthwhile proposition though, because: "You move away from assumption and a make a decision based on facts."

 

Used electric vehicles and the Government's plans to fund the second-hand market

A discussion on the return fleets will get on electric vehicles addressed the big question mark that continues to hang over their residual values.

Glass's Rupert Pontin said: "At the moment we do not have any factual evidence about what these [electric] vehicles are worth and the end of their life. When is the end of their life?"

The EST's Caroline Watson added: "With the analyses we do, we quite often write the RV down to zero, so if they do get a return, then it's a bonus."

She also said that there have been incidences where purchasing a second-hand EV has proved viable for certain fleets.

"When the case won't stack up financially for them because the mileage is too low, we've worked with at least one organisation - a university - which bought a second-hand Kangoo [Renault's Kangoo ZE is an electric light van]. For them, [it] was perfect because they were doing too low mileage and couldn't afford to get a brand new one.

"I'm relatively confident about [EV] RVs because with such low fuel costs people are going to want good value second-hand electric vehicles."

Hyundai's Robin Hayles revealed the Government has been considering the possibility of a funding initiative for used electric cars: "We met last week with OLEV (The Office for Low-Emissions Vehicles) when they were discussing budgets for next year and so on, and there was a definite message that there is a second-hand market for these vehicles. They did mention whether a portion of that funding needs to go into that." 



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