As a business owner or manager, you will no doubt have considered the environmental impact of your company and how you can improve this moving forward. There are many reasons why a business would see incentive to adopt more green policies. While installing charging bays on commercial premises for your staff is incredibly important, particularly as many fleets are transitioned to electric, it is also important to consider the impact of EV charging on other stakeholders of the business.
For many EV drivers, charging on-the-go is an essential part of the way they use their car. While their car charges, they will have to wait at the site. Inevitably, customers will try to choose chargers with nearby amenities. Therefore, if you have public charging at your shop or showroom, you immediately have a captive audience who are likely to look around. This is a perfect opportunity for passing trade.
Moreover, the provision of electric vehicle charging can also be an income generator in itself. Public charging points come in two forms, regular and rapid. Regular charging points operating on a 7kW supply and will charge the average EV in a few hours. These are often provided free of charge to the public as the additional time they wait is enough for them to take advantage of the leisure facilities nearby, meaning they spend money. However, Rapid chargers have a 50kW supply and can charge compatible vehicles in around 30 mins. 30 minutes is enough for someone to spend money on site, but customers are usually more willing to pay extra for the fast-charging capabilities on top of this. For example, Lidl currently provide both regular and fast charging bays at some stores. The regular charging is free but fast charging is around £6 per 30 mins. Most Lidl stores are open for 14 hours a day. That is a potential £168 per day on top of your usual revenue stream.
You may have already started to consider electrifying your fleet, whether it is company cars or business-use vehicles. You are clearly not the only company to have done so which means that many of your business partners and suppliers may be using electric vehicles of some form. They will have charging facilities available on their sites but the need for charging while mobile will also become very important. If you can provide charging facilities for suppliers while they are making deliveries or arriving for meetings, you will immediately differentiate yourself from others in the industry. Single companies adding to our charging infrastructure is vital but think of the possibilities if we start to create a commercial charging network which connects electric fleets across industries.
We believe the potential income generated by public charge points is enough to justify the initial outlay but the good new is that there are also grants available to subsidise their installation. The installation of charging bays for your employees is eligible for a £350 OLEV grant per charger. However, if these chargers are made available to the general public, they are eligible for a grant of up to 75% of their cost. This removes the burden of initial outlay and means that the company will have to cover only a fraction.
We will also be happy to assist you in supplying charging products from our many suppliers. We are completely independent which means that we provide an unbiased recommendation of suitable charging solutions and we can source these products at the lowest possible price. Moreover, we have a team of experienced engineers who have workplace installation accreditation from OLEV. We can provide a data driven forecast of potential income generated to help you visualise the impact the project will have on your business. Moving forward, we can provide reports on the usage of the charging points, rolling forecasts of income based on usage and make necessary changes to help you achieve the best outcome from the investment.
If you are a business owner or manager and you are interested in how you can incorporate electric vehicle charging into your current or future business premises, please get in touch. A member of our technical team will happily answer any questions that you have. Call us on 0141 280 8890 or drop us an email at info@britetechnicalservices.co.uk.
We also have a variety of platforms available with extensive information about electric vehicles (brite-ev.com), EV chargepoints (evchargepoints.com) and EV accessories.