Transition to electric vans is moving in right direction for businesses: Sarah Gray

For fleet operators running or considering heavier electric vans in the 3.5 to 4.25-tonne range, the regulatory picture has just become much clearer, and that clarity matters enormously when businesses are being asked to make substantial investment decisions.

One of the more counterintuitive aspects of the previous framework was that the extra weight of an electric battery, rather than the vehicle's function, its size, or the work it was doing, was enough to push a standard electric van into HGV testing territory.

That meant MOTs due after one year rather than three, and testing that could only take place at authorised testing facilities rather than standard MOT centres. For fleet managers running mixed fleets of electric and diesel vans doing essentially the same jobs, this created a compliance burden that had no operational logic behind it.

Moving these vehicles into the Class 7 MOT system, with the first test due at three years and access to standard testing centres, removes a real and unnecessary cost from the total ownership equation. For operators weighing up the business case for electric vans, that is a tangible improvement.

On the removal of tachograph requirements is something the industry has been pushing for consistently. The requirement had created an administrative and compliance overhead that was acting as a genuine disincentive to adoption.

Removing that requirement, with no distance restriction attached, brings the compliance framework into line with how these vehicles are actually used. Drivers of these vehicles are not HGV drivers. The routes they run, the loads they carry, and the working patterns involved do not reflect HGV operations, and the rules should not treat them as though they do.

The businesses I work with, at Dawsongroup vans, are at various stages of their electrification journey, and what holds many of them back is not the technology but uncertainty. That relates to infrastructure, about whole-life costs and whether the operational model will work. Regulatory complexity, much of which we’re seeing removed, feeds directly into that hesitation.

What the recent announcement does is reduce the friction associated with choosing a heavier electric van. It will not single-handedly solve the adoption challenge, as infrastructure, vehicle availability and upfront costs all remain live issues, but it removes a set of barriers that had no good reason to exist. When fleet operators can see that the compliance requirements for an electric van will be broadly equivalent to those for a diesel van doing the same job, the business case becomes easier to construct and easier to defend internally.

The direction of travel is set, and the 2035 deadline is not moving. What the industry needs now is for the regulatory environment to keep pace with the ambition, and today's changes are a genuine step in that direction.

Sarah Gray, Head of ZEV Strategy and Development for Dawsongroup vans and Vice Chair of the Commercial Vehicle Committee in the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association