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British Gas aims to become the UK's low carbon partner of choice by establishing a network of charging points for electric vehicles in customers' homes and workplaces.
Although the energy giant's innovation director, Dan Taylor, admits it has downscaled forecasts slightly, the firm still expects more than one million EVs to be on the roads by 2020.
This could require an infrastructure of two million charging points, with Taylor predicting that each EV would typically use two charging points - one domestic and the other at the workplace.
British Gas is determined to play a leading role in creating the charging infrastructure because, as Taylor said: "It will impact our customers through their electricity bills."
He said the key challenges in winning over customers to EVs were in overcoming range anxiety and in promoting the advantages of the technology on predictable routes.
"We can bring the benefits to life through charging solutions and tariffs," Taylor said.
Through British Gas' Time of Use Tariff, he said customers can charge up a Nissan Leaf for £2.70 at non-peak times compared with £3.70 at peak rates, from 7pm-11pm.
Taylor said British Gas led the way in introducing Smart metering, which eliminates estimated bills by sending readings directly to the supplier, claiming "it saves money for EV users".
British Gas is currently trialling six EVs, three Ford Transit Connects and three Nissan NV200s, but aims to be using 125 by the end of 2013.
"Our engineers take their vans home at night - with EVs they will continue to follow this model," said Taylor.
To enable home charging, British Gas fits a dedicated circuit for EVs with a three-pin plug on a separate fuse. With engineers working dedicated patches, Taylor said there was no need for EVs to be restricted to urban use.
Taylor admitted the market would remain "tentative" towards EVs while uncertainty over residual values remained, and said British Gas was lobbying for further incentives beyond the Government's £8000 Plug-in Van Grant.
He also called for "softer benefits" such as allowing the use of bus lanes for EVs, guaranteeing exemption from congestion charges and extending Plugged-in Places schemes to more than the eight cities where they currently operate.
Taylor said this year British Gas had already far exceeded the 100 charging points it installed in 2011, with sites including Renault and Nissan dealerships.
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