Multinationals Leading Charge to Electric Vehicle Transition
LONDON — A group of multinationals appears to be leading the demand for electric vehicles, switching more than 630,000 cars and vans to electric across 71 global markets, a new report from the Climate Group says.
Founded in 2003, with offices in London, New York, New Delhi, Amsterdam and Beijing, the nonprofit Climate Group is composed of some 500 multinational companies doing business in 175 markets worldwide.
The group’s EV100 initiative aims to get its member companies to switch their owned and contract fleets to electric vehicles and install a supporting charging infrastructure for their employees and customers by 2030.
In its latest report, Charging the EV Transition, the Climate Group says the number of EVs that have actually been deployed by its member companies has increased 57% from last year alone, with 231,000 electric vehicles added to their fleets.
By 2030, it projects, EV100 participating businesses will collectively transition over 5.75 million vehicles to electric as part of their commitment to making electric transport the new normal.
In a further sign that the initiative is working, the group’s participating members have installed over 35,000 EV chargers at 3,442 different locations worldwide, with 5,000 coming online in the last year alone.
This means over half of charging units the businesses have committed to installing are already operational, the authors of the report point out.
To meet the scale and speed of demand, Climate Group is urging automakers to increase the variety and availability of affordable EVs for company fleets.
To speed up the transition, support from policymakers is vital, Climate Group said.
Governments the world over need to urgently build out public charging networks, and work in partnership with pioneering businesses who are already running EVs, to ensure investment in infrastructure is targeted at locations of greatest need, the group said.
Other measures, like clear phase-out dates for gas and diesel vehicles and implementing measures such as zero emission vehicle mandates and CO2 standards, will further allow businesses to invest with confidence in fully electric options, it said.
Now in its sixth year, EV100 has grown from an initial group of 10 businesses in 2017 to a group of 128 corporate EV advocates.
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