A significant new electric vehicle charging site is to open next month at the headquarters of vehicle leasing and fleet management company, Arval.
At its Windmill Hill Business Park offices, 43 EV charging points will be available to Arval employees along with an additional seven for other businesses using the same building.
Furthermore, Arval has unveiled plans to install new charging points at its other UK premises in Manchester and Birmingham.
Ailsa Firth, Human Resources Director, explained: “As a business, we are committed to supporting the ongoing energy transition toward electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and this means giving drivers convenient access to charging points. In our own company car fleet, we already have around 100 plug-in vehicle drivers and we expect this number to grow over the coming months and years as availability, choice and experience grows.”
There is already research, notably from the International Council on Clean Transportation, suggesting EVs cost less to operate than petrol and diesel cars. With this project, we hope to prove the cost and practicality arguments for ourselves.”
The charge points and charging services at the Arval UK offices are being provided by NewMotion, the European leader in smart charging solutions for EVs. General Manager UK, Alan McCleave, explained that their complete infrastructure and service offering is intended to make EV charging as easy as possible for employees and visitors.
“We’ll be holding roadshows at Arval’s UK head office to introduce employees to the charging sites, the surrounding framework, and to show them how they work.”
All Arval employees who register will be provided with a validated charge fob. This will enable charging sessions at the NewMotion charge points at the Arval office. They will be able to charge at work for free for the first six months from when charge points go live. In addition, they will be able to use over 100,000 publicly available NewMotion charging locations throughout Europe, accessible with the same charge fob.
Miguel Cabaça, Managing Director at Arval UK added that the new charging development was also intended to act as a test ground and working example for customers who were thinking of increasingly electrifying their company cars and vans.
“We are delighted to be working with NewMotion on such a major installation. Every day we see a growing interest in electric vehicles from a broad cross section of our customers. By leading the way in adoption and creating the necessary infrastructure, we hope to provide a real world illustration of the practicalities behind the energy transition.”
NewMotion is the market leader in smart charging solutions for electric vehicles in Europe with more than 45,000 charge points under management. The company also provides access to a roaming network of more than 100,000 charge points across 28 countries in Europe for more than 170,000 registered drivers’ charge cards. In October 2017, NewMotion was acquired by Shell. NewMotion has been active in the market since 2009.
[source: NewMotion]
