Range anxiety isn’t always solved with another spreadsheet. Sometimes you need to hand someone the keys.
That’s one of the lessons from City of Parramatta’s fleet electrification program, where an EV drive week has become an important tool for building employee support for the transition.
Speaking at Everything Electric Sydney during a panel featuring finalists in the Fleet News Group Awards program, City of Parramatta’s Reweena Kaur explained how the council responded after identifying resistance towards electric vehicles among drivers.
City of Parramatta is a finalist in the Fleet News Group Awards program, with its approach demonstrating the importance of treating electrification as a change-management exercise rather than simply a procurement project.
Listen before changing the fleet
The idea for the drive week came from the council’s policy review. Kaur said the process identified employee concerns about moving from petrol vehicles to EVs.
“There were a lot of range anxiety at the beginning of this whole change, from changing to a petrol to an electric vehicle,” she said.
Rather than dismiss those concerns, the fleet team looked for a way to give employees direct experience with the technology.
“There is a lot of issues that change management has to be done right,” Kaur said.
Seven or eight EVs for a week
City of Parramatta arranged approximately seven or eight different electric vehicle models for employees to experience.
“We invited all the stakeholders and gave them opportunities to drive those vehicles and use them for half a day, for the shift, for site inspections,” Kaur said.
That meant employees weren’t limited to a short drive around the block. They could use an EV while performing the type of work they would normally undertake in a fleet vehicle.
The response was positive enough for the exercise to become part of the council’s ongoing transition program.
“Every year now we conduct EV drive weeks,” Kaur said.
Moving into commercial vehicles
The program is also evolving as the council’s electrification plans expand. Kaur said City of Parramatta is now exposing operational vehicle drivers to electric commercial vehicles and trucks.
That matters because the questions asked by an employee driving a passenger vehicle can be very different to those of someone who relies on a commercial vehicle to perform their job.
“This really helps in driving our EV adoption up,” Kaur said.
Fleet management meets change management
Kaur’s advice to other Fleet Managers is straightforward: engage stakeholders early.
“Have your EV transition plan if it’s not already in place,” she said. “Whole-of-life costing would form a really important part of it, and I’d also encourage early stakeholder engagement. That carries really heavy weight in a successful EV transition plan.”
For Fleet Managers accustomed to concentrating on vehicle specifications, procurement, maintenance and replacement cycles, electrification adds another capability to the job.
You need to bring the drivers with you. And sometimes the quickest way to change someone’s opinion about an EV is to let them drive one.
