The hidden running costs of company EVs, and how to cut them

Electric cars are sold to fleets on low running costs. Less servicing, no fuel duty, cheaper energy than petrol or diesel. All broadly true. But "cheaper" is not the same as "free", and several running costs get missed when a fleet business case is built, then quietly resurface a year later as unhappy drivers, messy expenses, and an HR team fielding complaints.

Here is where the real costs sit, and what to do about each one.

Public charging is not cheap

Home electricity is cheap. Public charging, especially rapid and ultra-rapid charging on the motorway network, is not. Rates at motorway service stations regularly sit well above the electricity most drivers pay at home, and for anyone who cannot charge at home this is not an occasional cost, it is the only cost.

A driver without off-street parking, and there are roughly nine million UK households in that position, ends up paying several times more per mile than a colleague who plugs in on their own driveway overnight. If your fleet policy assumes "EVs are cheap to run" based on home charging rates, it understates the real cost for a meaningful chunk of your drivers.

Reimbursement rates rarely match reality

Most fleets reimburse business mileage using HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate, a flat pence-per-mile figure. It is simple, but it is an average, and averages do not reflect a driver who charges mostly on rapid chargers versus one who charges entirely at home overnight.

That mismatch cuts both ways. Some drivers are overpaid relative to their actual cost, which is a P11D and tax exposure for the business. Others are underpaid and quietly resentful, which shows up as EV adoption stalling even after the fleet has bought the cars.

Home charging costs the business too, if you get it wrong

When employees charge company cars at home, someone has to work out what to reimburse. Done informally, that often means asking drivers to estimate kWh used and submit it for approval, which is slow, inconsistent and hard to audit. Done properly, it needs a system that captures actual home charging data and calculates a compliant reimbursement, which is what Reimburse is built for.

Admin time is a real cost, it just does not have a line on the invoice

Expense claims, mileage logs, receipt chasing and manual payroll adjustments all take fleet and finance time. None of it shows up in the total cost of ownership model used to justify the EV switch, but it is real cost, paid in hours rather than pounds.

The card and app sprawl problem

Drivers who charge in public often end up with three or four different charging apps and cards, one per network, because coverage is patchy. That is friction for the driver and a reconciliation headache for finance, chasing receipts across multiple providers to work out what should be reimbursed.

What cuts these costs

• One app and card for all charging. The Charge Scheme gives drivers a single card and app, powered by Plugsurfing, covering 76,000+ public chargers, plus home and workplace charging, so there is one place to see cost, not four.
• Salary sacrifice for personal charging. Where the car has private use, personal charging costs can be paid through gross salary via salary sacrifice, saving the employee 20 to 50% depending on tax band, while the employer saves employer National Insurance on the amount sacrificed.
• Accurate business mileage reimbursement. Reimburse calculates HMRC-compliant reimbursement from actual charging data rather than a flat average, so drivers are paid fairly and the business has a clean audit trail.
• No change to your existing scheme. Both products bolt on to whatever EV salary sacrifice or company car scheme you already run, so there is no need to switch lease provider or renegotiate contracts.

Building it into the business case

If you are presenting a fleet electrification business case, it is worth separating three numbers: the lease or purchase cost, the average reimbursement cost, and the estimated admin cost of running mileage and charging claims manually. Most fleets have a good handle on the first, a rough estimate for the second, and no number at all for the third. Making that visible is usually what gets the case for a proper charging and reimbursement system approved.

More detail on how mileage reimbursement works is on our Reimburse page, and the wider case for fleet teams is set out on fleet and procurement.

Next steps

If you want to see what your fleet's hidden charging costs actually look like, book a demo and we will talk through your current mileage and reimbursement setup.