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A DC charging cable is crucial for electric vehicles if they are to overcome their residual value stumbling block. That's the view of Jim McNally, asset risk manager at Alphabet and BVRLA residual value chairman, who was speaking at last week's ACFO electric vehicle seminar.
He told the event, held at Mini's Oxford plant, that the advent of the DC network, which will offer higher power and faster charging of electric vehicles, meant it was essential to remarket vehicles with a compatible lead if their residual values were to stand up.
"The DC infrastructure - I see that as being pivotal. The DC cable I see as being the link to the future - four or five years down the line, the DC infrastructure is going to be there.
"If you're disposing of an electric vehicle and it doesn't have a DC cable, what use is that to anybody?"
McNally described setting residual values for electric vehicles as "the biggest challenge to leasing companies since the advent of leasing" and said the problem was the lack of historical data.
"What's the one thing I want? Data. What have we got with EVs? No data. If you look at the percentage increase [of EV sales], it's considerable.
"Since 2011 it's over 300%, but at the moment, the data isn't there.
"In 2010 and 2011 we were having to write longer contracts for EVs to make them work. They were on four, five or six-year contracts, so that adds to that bubble and lack of data.
"We've got vehicles that are out there that we're waiting to dispose of, and people are quite happy with them but we haven't remarketed them yet."
Despite this, he hit out a leasing companies that were avoiding the electric vehicle issue and failing to offer businesses such models: "There's not really been a lot of venturing around EVs going on in the leasing industry.
"A lot of leasing companies are saying, 'you can't have a quote on that vehicle'. Is that really the most proactive way of dealing with the EV conundrum? There are leasing companies that just don't want to know."
He said the low volumes of electric vehicles meant the leasing industry could afford to take a small gamble with them: "Actually, a lack of volume creates a risk opportunity.
"We can afford to be a bit bold - we're not going to write 20,000 of these things, so we can afford to be bold without being stupid."
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