Vattenfall makes fleet electrification obligatory
Sweden’s utility Vattenfall has decided to “walk the talk,” as Tomas Björnsson, head of E-mobility says. The company has introduced a new policy that makes fleet electrification compulsory across the board.
Vattenfall claims it has successfully converted almost two-thirds of so-called benefit cars, a sort of company car, to fully electric or plug-in electric hybrid vehicles over the last three years. Driving the change was policy according to which all newly ordered cars had to be electric.
Now Vattenfall decided to proceed even faster and to broaden the approach. From the beginning of 2021, employees that are entitled to a management car (a sub-category of benefit cars), can only order full-electric vehicles.
The same goes for commercial passenger vehicles, which are used for work, i.e. by sales or service personnel. The only exceptions may be cases where an electric car would cause “significant harm to the business”. The utility lists an example of extreme situations, such as emergency repairs or when the vehicle needs to drive a high mileage each day.
“In the category of commercial passenger vehicles, we have so far seen less traction compared to benefit cars,” explains Pieter Dumas, program manager of Vattenfall’s car fleet electrification. “Currently, only a quarter of these cars are plug-in hybrids or fully electric, and we saw a risk that we would fail in our ambition if we did not act.”
In the category of light commercial vehicles, there is even more to do. Out of the 2,600 Vattenfall cars in this category, less than 2 per cent have been electrified so far. Dumas names the lack of available small, medium and large vans that are electric on the market but added that Vattenfall hopes to “quickly gain speed in also electrifying our cars in this category soon”.
To charge all the incoming electric vehicles, Vattenfall has installed charging points at its office locations. To date, there are 865 charge points, most of them in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.
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