The OLEV Grant for Electric Vehicle Charging Points

There are plenty of attractive factors which might tempt a fleet manager into thinking about switching the company car fleet from conventional cars to Electric Vehicles or plug-in hybrids.  Reducing emissions, saving money and gaining a whole lot of kudos into the bargain are just some of them. Environmental credentials are high on the shopping list for both customers and employees in the 21^st century. The Energy Savings Trust have published estimates which indicate that company cars currently cover over 12 billion miles a year – that’s around 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere, plus a whole lot of cost for the business.

The OLEV Grant

The OLEV Grant is a cash payment towards the cost of installing a charge point at a domestic property – OLEV stands for The Office for Low Emitting Vehicles. A cash sum of up to £350 can be used to help mitigate the costs of installing a charging point at an employee’s house, this scheme is known under its official title the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme or EVHS.  A further £300 is available to drivers living in Scotland via the Energy Savings Trust.  The average cost of installing an EV charging point at a domestic property is £1,000 but a lot depends on the specifications of the charge point and how accessible the site is.

Choosing Electric Vehicles for your fleet

The ability of employees to be able to charge an electric vehicle is one of the key factors which any company should evaluate when making the decision to change over their company car fleet to electric or hybrid cars but there are others.  These include:-

• Average business mileage on an individual employee basis including the daily commute, is this manageable in an EV and will the possible car choices have enough range?  Is this an opportunity to cut right back on business travel particularly after Covid in order to dovetail business travel more easily with new electric technology?
• How many employees can install a charging point where they live?  Do they own the property and does it have off-street parking, a qualifying condition for the OLEV grant?
• Do you intend to also install commercial charging points at the company premises or sites?  This might depend on the nature of the business and the pattern of driving
• Electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids must have been purchased after 1^st October 2016 in order to be eligible
• Full battery electric vehicles are covered by the OLEV grant but plug-in hybrids must have CO2 emissions of below 50g/km
• The manufacturer and installer of the charge point must be approved by OLEV

The OLEV Grant is easy to administer, it is claimed by the charge point installer who will just need to verify a few key facts to make sure that the installation is eligible.  The grant is deduced directly from the installation costs. Using the OLEV Grant to support a root and branch change to new electric fleet vehicles can be part of a broader picture to raise environmental awareness amongst employees and encourage them into green practises which can have the dual benefit of saving costs too.