Electric Vehicles

NHSBT wishes to support Electric Vehicle (EV) users including its own fleet, colleagues travelling between sites and even where possible, commuters to their base of work.

Eligible colleagues will also have access to our Salary Sacrifice Lease Car scheme providing favourable rates that enable you to adopt the technology if the upfront cost is a barrier. Historically, taxation has increased with popularity but the current rate of company car tax for EV’s is 2% increasing to 5% by 2028, compared to 37% for the most polluting cars for the same year.

Once adopted, one of the largest benefits is lower operational costs of electric vehicles including fuel per mile, maintenance, and repair costs, with conservative estimations being around £700 a year, dependant on make/model and charging cost.

Other benefits of EVs include:

  • Helping to meet our Carbon Net Zero Strategic requirement and reducing our environmental impact
  • Zero exhaust emissions, entering clean air zones for free
  • No Vehicle Excise Duty (Road Tax) payments until 2025, and favourable first year rates after that
  • More charging locations than petrol stations
  • 100% discount from the London Congestion Charge and other clean air zones

There is currently more than 32,575 charging locations compared to less than 8,365 petrol stations and as EV’s charge speed and range vary, data bases such as Zapmap are a useful indication of the locations, speeds and availability of chargers to help you plan your journeys.

Electric Vehicle Charging Points

To support as much charging as possible, the estates teams frequently review their charging capabilities to provision as much ability for users to charge whilst meeting the other energy demands.

Due to the ability of some of our infrastructure, we currently operate untethered 7kw and 22kw chargers at the following sites:

  • Liverpool
  • Barnsley
  • Manchester
  • Birmingham
  • Colindale
  • Bristol Filton
  • Southampton

The availability of these chargers is currently based on a cooperative, first come first served basis but this requires the support of the users. To help you, the Green Travel and Transport Policy has a hierarchy enabling the estates teams to prioritise the liveried vehicles first, then colleagues travelling between sites, and finally if the chargers are unused, commuters.

Cost

NHSBT seeks only to recover the cost of the electricity used and not profit from charging. As users may prepay for charging, NHSBT has agreed to review the average cost per kWh across the charging sites at the end of the financial year, fixing that cost of charging for the next financial year that is currently setting the cost at 43p/kWh (2024/25). This supports a mode of transport that is cheaper and more sustainable mode for the organisation, reducing the impact from rapid fluctuations in energy prices for the user as much as possible.

The payment for charging is managed by a third party, and for help on using the charging points please see the Electronic Vehicle Charging Points User Guide

For EV lease car owners, the Government sets out a HMRC advisory rate for claiming business miles every quarter, that currently considers users may pay as little as 7p/kWh for home charging… or more than 81p/kWh for ultrarapid charging on the ‘high street’.

It is important for you to not only review the requirement for travel in the first place, but the current fuel reimbursement rate and to understand your vehicles individual range and charging requirements before making your journey.