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Charging your business’s electric vehicles

If your business is looking to move to electric vehicles (EVs) and you want to know more about your charging options then read our comprehensive guide.

Charging at a depot

If your business’s EVs are parked at a depot overnight, you could install chargepoints and use this time to charge them.

Installing chargepoints at a depot

Make sure you follow government advice when installing any new charging infrastructure

For most EVs, 7kW or 22kW fast chargers are the best options for charging overnight. To choose between them, there are a few things you need to think about first.  

Charging costs at a depot

Charging at a depot is one of the cheapest ways to charge your business EVs. However, the upfront chargepoint installation cost is high, so you might want to think about how to bring down costs in other ways.  

Balancing electricity demand

You can use load management systems to stop your electricity demand becoming too high. This limits the amount of power being used while also making sure that every plugged in EV can still charge. 

Let’s look at an example of a bank of six chargepoints with a maximum power rating of 22kW, on a site with 32kW of spare electrical capacity. 

When all six chargepoints are being used, the load management equipment limits the amount of power at each chargepoint to avoid exceeding the spare capacity. 

With any number between one and six vehicles, the load management equipment will ensure the maximum charge possible is delivered whilst not exceeding spare capacity. 

Charging at drivers' homes

If drivers take vehicles home rather than to a depot, you should help them set up at-home charging. However, they can only get at-home charging if they have off-street parking

Installing charging infrastructure at a driver’s home

If your drivers don’t already own EVs, you’ll probably need to help them install charging infrastructure.

Costs for charging at a driver's home

The overall cost would depend on average electricity costs at the time, but there are ways to reduce this. You must also consider the cost of installing infrastructure.

Paying your drivers back

As well as installing the infrastructure, you need to think about how you’ll pay your drivers back for charging business vehicles. There are different ways you can do this: 

  • Use HMRC’s advisory electricity rate (AER) to calculate roughly how much you should reimburse car drivers per mile.
  • Use a virtual fuel card or app that links drivers’ electricity meters to your payroll . This lets you add business charging costs to drivers’ pay as a business expense.
  • Use a payment system that pays charging costs directly to the drivers’ energy suppliers. Your drivers pay nothing, and your business is given one bill for all home-charging of business vehicles.

 

 

Rapid charging electric vehicles

Using rapid charging gives vehicles extra range when travelling long distances.

Overnight public charging

If your drivers need to use on-street public charging, they can use it to charge vehicles overnight. They can use Zap-Map to find chargepoints

Additional resources:

Last updated: 16 November 2023