BVRLA News
www.bvrla.co.uk October 2010
The newsletter of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association
Electric car experiment still has pieces missing by John Lewis There has been a lot of coverage of electric vehicles in the press in recent weeks. We have heard that the new Nissan Leaf and Peugeot iOn will be available to lease from early 2011. At the same time residual data specialists CAP gave a healthy forecast for the Leaf, the government announced the criteria for its £5,000 ‘Plug-In Car Grant’ and consortiums around the country started bidding for the next wave of charging infrastructure subsidies. These are all key steps in enabling the massmarket uptake of ultra-low-carbon vehicles, and the UK is clearly making great progress.
But calculating these risks requires information, and this is still in short supply. That is why the Nissan Leaf and Peugeot iOn ‘launches’ due in 2011 will be more like test projects than traditional new model roll-outs. We are talking about a few hundred cars at most. 2011 will see leasing and rental firms, their customers and vehicle manufacturers trialling these few vehicles to see if their undeniable environmental and commercial potential can really cut it in the modern business world. Vital lessons will be learnt about how fleet profiles can be adapted to embrace these new vehicles and what sort of fleet management support is required. In the meantime, the government needs to be clearer about exactly how its Plug-In Car Grant will work. How will it be treated for VAT and corporation tax purposes? The shambolic introduction of the car scrappage scheme should provide a good example of what to avoid.
Nissan Leaf: billed as “the world’s first affordable massproduced zero emission vehicle”, pre-orders are already available
Our industry is going to play a major role, with rental and leasing rapidly emerging as the favoured ways of encouraging nervous and reluctant corporate fleets and consumers into trialling new electric technology. BVRLA members are experts at calculating the residual value and maintenance risks associated with different vehicles and they will assume this burden.
Manufacturers have to play their part, by being clearer about their product road map and pricing, their warranties and what maintenance support will be available. They need to ensure that there is a free market for their vehicles by providing a range of purchasing and funding options.
The dearth of information for prospective electric vehicle buyers must also be addressed. Is it better to charge batteries little and often or give them a full charge every few days? How does fast charging affect battery life? It is going to be an interesting year, and the BVRLA will do its very best to keep members up-to-date with this big electric experiment. n
bvrla.co.uk
In this issue VOSA could endorse BVRLA’s CV standards The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency might accredit the association’s quality assurance scheme for commercial vehicles page 2 Conference draws heavyweight speakers Transport Minister Mike Penning and VOSA chief executive Alastair Peoples will headline the BVRLA’s key industry event page 3 HMRC asks for help with VAT mileage data After admitting flaws in its method of calculating the VAT leasing customers can recover, the HMRC wants to work with the BVRLA to improve it page 3 Car rental: setting out the key facts A handy new one-page guide explains everything customers need to know – and it’s free to members page 4 Golf Day: results revealed Never mind the Ryder Cup, who took home the trophies from last month’s BVRLA Golf Day? page 5
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