Mitie's electric-first policy accelerates switch away from diesel

Mitie is on track to transition its entire fleet of cars and vans to full electric within the next three years, becoming one of the first major organisations to achieve this feat.  

Almost 40% of the fleet is already fully electric – some 2,650 cars and vans – and fleet manager Heidi Thompson (left) is confident of hitting the company’s target of half the fleet being fully electric by March 2023. Her aim is to electrify the rest by 2025.

The business launched its Plan Zero strategy in 2020, outlining its commitment to reach net zero operational emissions by 2025.

As part of the plan, Mitie committed to switching 20% of its car and small van fleet, around 700 vehicles, to electric by the end of 2020, which it achieved three months ahead of schedule.

By March of this year, it had increased the number of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) further, electrifying 30% of its fleet – again, three months ahead of schedule – reducing Mitie’s annual CO2 emissions by around 10,000 tonnes. 

Thompson says it is important to have a clear policy in place which includes ambitious, but achievable, milestones for the fleet’s EV transition.

She explains: “Having achievable milestones along the way is crucial. Adoption also needs to be driven from the top down.

“Everybody at that senior level drives an EV. I switched them out of their diesel vehicles because we need them to be delivering the message and leading from the top.

“We just said, you’re leading our business, we’re leading the policy, you need to be in an electric vehicle, because, unless you’re doing it, our frontline workers won’t want to do it if our MDs are sat in diesel vehicles not facing any of these challenges themselves.”

Electric-first policy

The business has adopted an ‘electric-first’ policy, swapping internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles with EVs at the end of their lease.

Three-quarters of the company car fleet has already transitioned to EV, with fewer than 700 cars left to electrify – arguably the easier part of the migration plan.

Meanwhile, it has 400 electric vans on the fleet and has 800 on order, with around 150 being delivered each month. The business has found a way to adapt its journey cycles to meet the range and charging requirements of electric vans. thompson says: 

“We’ve not bought any new diesel cars for more than two years, and we’ve only purchased diesel vans if it’s business-critical.” 

When Mitie first introduced its electric-first policy, it recognised that with many of its drivers never having driven an EV before, there were concerns and perceptions to address.

Roadshows were held with EV manufacturers, which enabled drivers to have a test drive.

These roadshows have continued, but have not just been limited to drivers. Thompson says contract managers have also been invited, giving them an understanding of the technology involved and how it can work for them.

Mitie also introduced an internal social platform for fleet, giving drivers the opportunity to ask any questions they may have around running an EV.

One year into its transition, an EV survey of drivers showed that 91% were glad they had switched to electric, with 90.5% saying that they would recommend switching to their friends, family and colleagues.

Operating a diverse fleet

Mitie operates a diverse fleet with a mix of perk and job-need company cars, and light commercial vehicles (LCVs) involved in a range of activities, from carrying mowers for its landscaping business to carrying detainees for its care and custody business, or simply going to fix a boiler or a light bulb.  

Replacement cycles depend on the business mileage, with a minimum of four years to a maximum of five for cars.

“It’s the same with vans,” says Thompson. “However, our security business operates 24/7, so those vehicles can be doing 100,000 miles a year, because they're on shift patterns, which means they will be replaced a lot sooner.” She adds:

“We also have some vehicles that might do 10 miles a day, which can stay on the fleet for six years. It just depends on which business unit they’re assigned to and what the job-need is for that vehicle.”

Some vehicles have had to have contracts extended, however, due to long lead times.

Mitie’s determination to electrify all vehicle operations has also seen it launch a zero-emission gritting service for commercial use, using an electric gritter and sustainable white marine salt.

Affectionately known as ‘Gritter Thunberg’ after the environmental campaigner, the service uses the first zero emission gritter of its kind – a pure EV with a battery-powered gritter attached. Hitting Mitie’s EV transition targets, however, has not been easy, given component shortages leading to long lead times for new vehicles.

“We had a challenge last year,” admits Thompson.

“We had 800 electric vans on order, but supply market issues meant we were not getting them, so we had to change our approach.”

Just 30 vans were delivered. “They’re coming through now, but our plan was to hit our EV target last year by transitioning those vans,” she says.

“When we realised that was going to happen, we went back to our car fleet and looked at what diesel vehicles we could return early free of charge.”

Thompson says, on average, she is experiencing lead times for new vehicles of around 12 months.

Mitie bulk orders both vans and job-need cars, which offers advantages. “It means that we can have more meaningful conversations with manufacturers,” explains Thompson.

She adds: “In December, we’ll look at what our requirements are for the next calendar year, and we’ll get the whole year’s orders booked in.

“We can also cancel at any point. So, if a new, improved vehicle comes to market, with a better range, we can replace with the new model.”  

It is also important to acknowledge when something doesn’t work and to quickly change course.

“When we started out, we ordered a load of (electric) VW Golfs and the range we were getting was 80 miles,” says Thompson. “We were getting phone calls every day from drivers telling us it just wasn’t practical.”

The vehicles were returned and replaced with a more suitable vehicle. “It’s about capturing those lessons learned and our policy now is we don't have any vehicles on our fleet that have less than a 250-mile range,” she adds.

She also now reviews what cars are available to employees on a quarterly basis, sitting down with her leasing provider, Lex Autolease, to see what better vehicles may have become available.

EV charging and costs incurred

Thompson says the main challenge with transitioning the van fleet to electric is 55% of its van drivers can’t have a home charger.

“We are having to look at who’s easy to transition, so who can have a home charger, who is not doing more than the WLTP mileage,” she says. “Even if their vehicle is not due for renewal, we’re taking the diesel off them, giving it to somebody who can’t take electric and giving them an electric vehicle. We’re looking at the quick wins.”

Thompson says that the public charging network is improving all the time but, with 48% of its EV drivers highlighting it as an issue in a poll, she acknowledges: “It’s just not where we need it today for some of our drivers. City centres are great, but in rural areas there is less charging.”

Mitie has installed 7kW, 22kW and 50kW charging bays at its offices and any new offices it opens will have chargers accessible from 50% of its parking bays.

It has also just started using The Miles Consultancy (TMC) to manage the reimbursement of drivers for the cost of charging their vehicles.

Thompson explains: “TMC combines workplace and home charging data, along with public charging data from the receipts that are uploaded by the drivers. We’ve also got two cards with Allstar – a charge card and an expense card – which they also use the data from to determine what we reimburse or deduct from a driver.”

Used in combination with an individual’s business mileage, it enables drivers to be reimbursed at actual cost in a way which is HMRC-compliant, instead of being forced to use the Government’s advisory electricity rate (AER) of 5p per mile. She adds:

“Anybody who doesn’t want to share their energy provider and tariff details with us will only be able to be reimbursed at 5ppm, because we need that data to be able to do the new process.”

Van drivers are also given the option of Mitie paying their home energy provider direct for home charging or being reimbursing in the normal way through their expenses.

Thompson says: “We needed to make sure that we had a robust process in place to cover actual costs so we can say to the drivers, you won’t be out of pocket if you use an electric vehicle.”

Mitie is using its significant experience of large-scale roll-out of EVs to support more businesses in their own transition to zero emission fleets.

It has developed an EV transition service helping customers design and manage every aspect of their own switch to electric.

Thompson on...

Risk management brings CO2 savings

Mitie’s fleet team has put a series of measures in place to reduce the emissions of its existing petrol and diesel vehicles, such as a telematics driver behaviour system that has reduced diesel consumption by 75,000 litres and saved 19.5 tonnes of CO2 in just one year.

It has also just awarded a contract to Vodafone to install a new combined dashcam and telematics solution to its van fleet.

It already had telematics fitted to vans, but has now opted to go with a new provider to install the combined solution. 

“We trialled the system over a six-month period on 50 vehicles and we’ve seen a 60% reduction in accidents,” says Thompson.

The forward-facing and driver-facing dashcams employ artificial intelligence to monitor driver behaviour.

“It will identify if you are smoking, if you are drinking, if you’re not wearing your seatbelt and if you fall asleep,” she adds.

In the first instance, the system alerts the driver in-cab that they have done something wrong. If they do not rectify it, it then starts recording and that recording then gets sent to the driver’s line manager by email. 

Thompson says drivers were initially wary of the system, but after stressing it was about ensuring their safety on the road, they bought into the new technology.

She stresses it also enables the fleet team to recognise the good drivers.

“We need to call out the good behaviours as well as the bad, so if we have drivers that never get flagged, we can be having a conversation with them saying their driving is really good for the company.” 

 

Fleet team responsibilities

The 21-strong fleet team, including Thompson, is based across sites in Birmingham and Bristol. The operations team, which looks after the allocation of vehicles and talking to the drivers, is based in Birmingham, while the fleet administrations department, which provides a back-office function in terms of parking, tolls, congestion charges and fuel cards, is located in Bristol.

Thompson’s rise up the ranks at Mitie has been impressive. She joined the business in 2006 as an office junior in the fleet department. She explains:

“Every time somebody moved around or left, I would just put myself forward and say I want to learn that area, so I’ve done every job there is in the team.”

Her ‘can do’ attitude saw her take on more fleet responsibilities before being appointed fleet manager five years ago. It also helped Mitie win Fleet of the Year (more than 1,000 vehicles) at this year’s Fleet News Awards.