Eight out of every ten vans you sell today still burn diesel, but the numbers say they don’t have to.
Paul Kirby, founder of EV Essentials and host of the EV Café, breaks down the REAL cost equation that’s pushing giants like BT, British Gas and the AA to flip their fleets.
Listen and learn:
- 00:45 Why that “range-anxiety” line is five years out-of-date
- 06:30 The charging-at-home problem – and the simple tariff hack that slashes running costs to 7 pence per mile
- 14:10 How one OEM priced an e-van LOWER than its diesel twin (and what it means for residuals)
- 24:40 Total-Cost-of-Ownership for dummies: the 4 levers every sales manager must show business buyers
- 31:15 Drivers can kill any deal—Paul’s playbook for getting “bums on seats” and turning sceptics into EV lifers
- 38:20 What the 2030 ZEV mandate really means for dealerships, leasing companies and front-line sales staff
Perfect for dealer principals, sales teams and anyone who’s still hearing “I’ll wait till the tech’s ready.”
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
To find out more visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk
Time, welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade podcast in Association of Car Without. The online car-changing destination. Together we share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. First thing, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling and the Motor Trade. Today I'm joined with Paul Kirby and something a little bit different today. Paul Kirby is known as the Electric Van Man. Paul is the man that's behind EV Essentials, a training and consultancy company based in the UK, but also the EV Café.
I'm really excited to learn about not just electric vehicles but the electric commercial vehicles today. Paul, welcome aboard to the podcast. Thank you very much, Simon. I'm excited to be here. It's always good to speak with people that have been operating and very successful in a world that I used to play a small part in many years ago. Well, I guess I've done a little bit of research on it. Listen to some of the podcasts there. At the EV Café, I think there's about 150 different podcasts there, so I didn't listen to all of them. I'll show you more new. And listen, I urge other listeners to go and have a look at this and we'll show you how to find that later on.
But from a self-described rocky start with your first job as a van driver, if you're becoming one of the leading EV advocates, I don't know if that's the right way to describe it. How do those early experiences shape your career and what sparked your passion for the electric commercial side of it, I suppose? Yeah, well, I'm impressed that you picked up on the rocky start. I can't remember where I shared that one, probably. One of the podcasts there. Yeah, one of the podcasts. But yeah, on my first day, in my first job, I managed to drive a Ford transit into the side of a car on a roundabout. So it was a very rocky start.
It took me everything I could to walk through that door back again. But my first job properly in the industry was cleaning cars. I didn't have high aspirations early doors, but then I fell into the industry, as many of us do, you can check out, but you can never leave. But I got into the corporate world in 2000 and then worked my first van job in 2003. So come in for the first three years then. Well, three or four years. Yeah, so a mix of Vauxhall, in fact, it was about eight years. So Vauxhall, BMW, so I did all the BMW training back in the day. And back when you had to pass your training course to sell BMWs, they wanted to make sure that you were tip-top and I managed to pass.
Goodness knows how then. And then, and then dive out of that retail world, you know, trying to avoid working weekends, kids, that type of thing. And then, yeah, got into the corporate world. And then my first van job in 2004 for Mercedes-Benz. And actually, that was where I had my very first experience of electric vehicles because that very year in 2004, I drove my first ever Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Electric. Had the payload of a bag of crisps because all the batteries had a range of about 40 miles on the top speed of about 40 miles an hour. But it was very interesting, but definitely didn't capture my mind or my heart at that time. And then we sort of moved on.
It's amazing. That's 2004. Yeah. We just think now in 2025, it's still relatively cutting edge and knee, but clearly not. No. And just four years later, we launched the Vito E-cell, which I mean, the Sprinter didn't ever come out at that time. But the Vito E-cell did, which was its first electric guys. And around that time, there was the Modec and there was Smith's electric vehicles. And there was a few other brands knocking around the electrification, but it didn't really take off to be fair. And then sort of life moved on a little bit. I worked for a fleet for a while, fleet managed for Wicks and Travis Perkins, the next day delivery service, and again, vans and heavy trucks at that point.
And then found my way into Least plan, which eventually became head of commercial vehicles, the commercial vehicle team for there. But it was there really, 2016, the Least plan joined the EV100. So this was a recognition of companies that wanted to get on that cycle to be net zero by 2030, actually. So I don't know how they're getting on with that because it was a pretty tight deadline back then, I think even tighter now. And that was where we really began to get under the skin of electric vehicles. And it became an interest. And I learned about certain things that had gone on in the industry that really caused us to think our quality issues, climate issues, all things like that.
And you begin to think, well, actually, I could do some good here. And that's kind of the mindset that I adopted at that point. So then I'm always fascinated speaking to someone like you and I that step away from safe jobs. And you decide to go into your own EV consultancy with EV essentials. Yeah. What motivated the leap? Can you tell us a bit about the moment that you knew that you had to start your own business? What was the entrepreneurial journey you like and to step away from that corporate world? Yeah. So the corporate world was a funny one, really, because for me, I enjoyed a lot of it. So I was working with Least plan, I sort of progressed my way up.
But it was a hard, you know, bit of a dogfight to get, you know, to move up the way in the corporate world. And I also had this passion for what you would term vlogging. So it was me, my phone and a selfie stick. And I would talk to the camera on the end of my selfie stick and just post these things on LinkedIn. First started that in about 2016 and began to notice and comment on all of the stuff that was going on electric, but of course, the corporate world, the corporate machine doesn't necessarily like you behaving out of control. So I'm going to say, I'm sorry, I'm cutting off there, but you know, I only get that with car salespeople all the time that want to be entrepreneurial.
Yeah. And I get it. You've put then the brand saying, no, no, no, we need to put this remarketing and sign everything off. But that vlogging world, that is not that world, is it? No. And you know what, there are some really great people. There was a guy over in Ireland that used to absolutely get bonkers for for care and for this and for that. And he was just brilliant. But then he sort of disappeared off the scene. And I was like, I know the guy. I know the guy. Yeah. So I know a little bit about that story there behind it there. And it's sometimes it's the OEMs. The dealer groups are like, hold on, this is not corporate.
And I'm supposed to get both sides of that. But it's tricky. Yeah. It's a tricky balance to get. And so, but so I left lease plan just before COVID to go to what I consider to be a more nimble agile company and a company less bothered about corporate approach, which was Vanarama, which is Van Roker. And I set up their LCV and EV strategy or that sort of transitional strategy to help move to electric world. What turned out to be cars more so. Okay. And it frustrated me because I'm not a car person. I don't, you know, I respect that there's a lot of good car people that are probably listening to this right now go and we've just lost half L.
Put the phone down. But I wanted to just serve the van market. And there was a challenge, the challenge of electric bands at the time there was probably four or five electric bands on the road. And we were just experiencing the first Chinese vehicles coming to market in the Maxis E deliver three, which was a first ground up electric van followed them by the VW ID buzz a little bit later. But there was a lot of noise about that sector, but not enough action. And I'm kind of like, I want to get out and do something. So I under the encouragement of a couple of people and the support of a couple of people, because I don't think you can do a lot of these leaps without some wisdom around you.
You should have some wisdom, especially when you're a bit impulsive like I am. And I had some good advice, good, solid people, and people that were willing to give me business. You know, as I was leaping into that world, said people at Maxis took a chance on me. There was a guy called Peter Golding from Fleet Check, who took a bit of a leap and ended up doing some work with a company called Geotab. And all of that kind of happened as I made that leap and gave me that confidence to make the journey. Yeah. And then you can begin to pad on your own canoe, and you can kind of create your own narrative a little bit.
And so I was able to lean into the sort of video work that I was doing with some of the brands. I was able to sort of tell my own story without being told off every two minutes for getting something wrong. And it's not that I want to be an absolute disruptor, but I do want to be able to say the things that need to be said. And I do want to be direct and helpful and encouraging and challenging from time to time in order to be able to see the market move forward to, you know, ultimately to success, really, in terms of getting electric electric vans on the road and bums on seats to sell those zones in the process.
I go back to when you're vlogging there. And I'm just thinking like car whales, one of our partners on the podcast. And Matt Watson, there's so many people, the consumers look at that side of it. And some people will say, well, do you really want to see a car racing down a runway or whatever? But to when they've got something like 10 million people subscribing to that channel, there's a world out there that the corporate world, and again, I'll say it again, I get why they're nervous about salespeople doing that. But I do believe that sales people, they need to be, they're running their own business within a business. They need to promote themselves and give themselves that credibility, which the American market, it's all about people selling themselves and giving that individual credibility that we don't have over here in the UK as much.
Yeah, I think Simon, you know, as well as I do, we will use in the sales room, the phrase people buy from people, many, many, many times. And people are individuals and we've all got our own personality and we should have an opportunity as far as possible. And I'm with you, I do get the requirements of the corporate world. But the corporate world also make a lot of assumptions at different levels. So to give you an example, I, you know, in in least plan, I would have the local team saying, poor, poor, you know, take that post down or don't do that or don't say that. And then I would get a phone call from the head office team in in Holland, the Netherlands, saying, how do you do it?
How do you get all of that? All of that. How do you, how do you produce it? Well, how do you get the connections and the comments and the this and the that and the other? And I'm like, sorry, just let me stop me there. Can you just to just talk to one another? Yeah. Now, I'll go say, not everyone. We have a lot of clients who are enlightened. I'm going to say at Publish One's Way group, California, Chris. This is someone who works for the Swan's Way organization. And at the same time, a Volkswagen California, if you want to buy that camper van, you type into YouTube, he pops up absolutely everywhere. But he does it very, very well.
It's it really he does. And there's lots of that's just one. There's lots of people. Yeah. And you know, I don't I don't necessarily claim to do it well, but you know, I built a following on LinkedIn. So, you know, multiple thousands of people follow me on LinkedIn, which, you know, for better or for worse from their point of view, I'm not sure. But and then I've got, you know, three old thousand subscribers on YouTube looking at electric van reviews. And that's, you know, it's a very niche kind of product. But you know, some of those videos are getting 50, 60,000 views. And that's that's good. It conveys a message. It helps people make good informed decisions.
And that's the bottom line. What I want to do is enable a group of people that need to use a van. Because if you need to use a venue, it's about revenue. It's about doing a job for you, meeting a need. And I want to help you meet that need, but with an electric van. And so I focus on electric. I've occasionally talk outside of that. But that is my aim and focus because people need a voice of reason rather than a reactionary voice. So, you know, it's easy for people to say, I like your bands will never work. They don't go far. Heavy carry. There's two. Yeah, all of those sorts of things. But listen, let me present you with the facts.
Let me tell you what affects all of those things. And then you can make an informed choice. But I would always say get your bum on a seat, go and go and try it out, test it out. Because that's what really matters. So Paul, I first come across you with the EV Cafe. Did that form about the same time? I understand you're a founder, one of the founders of the EV Cafe team. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about? Yeah. So the EV Cafe was an innovation from a guy called Johnny Berry. Johnny invited me on the first episode. Let's call it that number one. The number one I was there.
And he said, will you present on vans? And I said, is a cat a hairy beastie? Absolutely. Of course, I'll be there. And so this was the second Wednesday of lockdown. So it was around the first or second of April 2020. We can all remember that time where we all sat at home and we twiddled our thumbs. Well, we gave two hours of whatever it was at that time. But we tried to be a little bit non-corporate. We tried to be just a chat, to give a break to the monotony of being at home and locked away in our houses. And so we did that for about three months every Wednesday, so for a couple of hours.
And we built it up and eventually settled on Zoom, this platform that we're recording this on, and started to continue those things and expand them out and cover different topics and invite other people on as guests. And we did lots of weird, wonderful things. But we found it was good for two things. First of all, we're accelerating the conversation around electric vehicles. And second of all, really supported that mental health issue that was there at that time, the kind of connection that we all need. Nobody wanted to be locked away. Nobody wanted to be struggling to to converse. Some people were stuck in flats, right? It was an awful time for some people and not so bad for others.
So we looked to help. And it ended up, there was five of us that regularly joined. There was myself, Johnny, a guy called John Curtis, a lady called Sarah Sloman and a guy called Sam Clark. And so we then, when lockdown finished, we tried to do it physically. And we didn't really have tech, but we had to go anyway, you know, just kind of gave it a go. But we built up a following and by, I think it was 2021, when you could get back to events, we had a public event. It was called the ITT Hub, a guy called Mark Griffin supported us and invited us to be on to create a little stage because he sort of began to follow us.
And then a charge point manufacturer called my energy said, can we sponsor you? And we're like, yeah, why not go on? And they said, right, we'll give you this much. We want to put this on there and we'll do, can you do content for us for a year and support us just, you know, putting out social media, you know, recording different videos, all that sort of stuff. And then, so that started. And then the AA came on. And so the AA, of course, absolutely market leading organization. And everybody knows who the AA are. But to our earlier point around corporate communication, they recognized that we could put things across in a way that they couldn't.
Yeah. And we were able to sort of insert the AA into our sort of, I would thought one of a better word, funner way of doing things. And just allow people to engage with the AA and with GeoTAB, which was another company that sponsored us at the time of my energy, with those brands to understand their connection with electrification and to support their messaging, which was serious, but in a way that was perhaps a little bit more whimsical and a bit more fun. So that, you know, everybody won and everybody moved forward at the pace they wanted to. Okay. So yeah, that's how it got started. So I want to get into some of the nitty-gritty stuff because people listen to this podcast, deal groups, some manufactured people, lots of sales managers.
And by the way, if they still listen to it, there might be people in the van side of it. That's cool. I'm sure they are. Shout out for the van boys. Good. So listen, if I get this right, 2004, if I remember this right, you drove your first Mercedes electric van. Yeah. Okay. So what's the, that's, that's a long time ago, obviously. But actually, commercial vehicles still only around 5% are new van sales. I think that's another round 5% you can tell me a little bit high, it's about 8%. 8% still low. Okay. Electric light, electric commercial vehicles. Correct. Yeah. Are you surprised by the pace of electric, obviously, the adoption? What do you see as the main barriers that are holding the people back?
What's, why is there not a wider uptake of electric vans there? And bear in mind, on the car guy, is it range? Is it the weight of it? Is it what they can carry? What's the barriers there? So am I surprised? There is a lot of pressure against the adoption of electric vans. I suppose actually I am a little bit surprised. Vans haven't quite worked as perhaps we would have liked. There's, there's a number of challenges. Government have really supported very, you know, financially the car world, right? So you've got heavy benefit and kind benefits for drivers. So you and I, if we drive an electric vehicle, we're paying a minimal amount of tax. Whereas if we were to drive the equivalent petrol or diesel, we would be paying considerably more tax.
So, you know, it can save people two, three, four, five thousand pounds a year, depending on what they were driving before. So there's a heavy incentive for the driver to go and do that within companies and fleets of vans, of course, that driver doesn't have that same benefit. And in fact, you know, what we know from, from history, you know, be they diesel or petrol, you know, drivers can scupper any decent project. So if somebody, if a fleet has a great idea, you know, be it telematics, be it, you know, driving differently, or, you know, anything, the drivers can go, yeah, now I'm not going to play. And there is an element of that in this.
There is also an element of the real challenge around charging because charging vehicles at home away from a depot and lots of businesses that have gone big like BT and British gasoline and central, don't have the ability to charge in depots. They would typically charge at home. And of course, many drivers don't have the ability to charge at home because we're talking blue collar workers. We're talking in this in the corporate sector. So these are the people that are, you know, fitting boilers, repairing your broadband or whatever it might be. And, you know, their van parks on the road at night and they don't have the ability to get energy in. So it's slowed things because the challenge is more extensive than it was.
Weight typically is not a massive issue at the medium sized van. You know, you can still get a ton in most of the vans that are on the road today in that medium sector. Am I thinking it was an issue to start with back in 2004? Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, yeah, initially the vans wouldn't carry enough weight. And then when you went to the big vans, so take the first iteration of the Mercedes sprinter that came to market in around 2019 or 20 or somewhere around there. It can only carry something like 720 kilos, whereas normally a sprinter was sort of good for 11 or 1200 kilos. So you were taking a big haircut when it came to the ability to carry.
And also the ranges weren't great at that time. So the veto came out with sort of 1890 miles of range. And the sprinter was coming around with the similar sort of range, the transporter, which was a great van in its own right. But when it came to electrification, it came with like 60 miles range and a really slow charger. And so there was a lot of, in my humble opinion, a lot of errors that were done in the race to get electric vans out there that weren't really fit for purpose. Now we are getting vans out there that will carry up to 15, 1600 kilos. It's not over 250 miles. They will charge really quite quickly, not, you know, not perfectly.
And there's still challenges around that I don't doubt. But there's a variety of vehicles from small vehicles all the way up through to the very big vehicles, chassis cabs, fridges, anything you could do on a van back with a diesel, you can predominantly find something that will do the job today. And but it's not for everybody. And that's why we only got to get 16% because not everybody can move towards it. But this Zev mandate that is in you, you'd be very familiar with it in the car world, 20, I think it's at 25% this year. And then the vans, yeah, the vans is 16 and it will go to 70 by 2030, whereas 80 for the cars.
And then of course, the complete ban from 2035. So there's a lot of work to do to get the tech and the spec up to speed. But there is more than enough vans out there that will do a job for more than enough people. But it's gone into the big corporates. The OEMs have really focused on those big deals. It's now time to really focus on Bill and Fred, the builder, the baker, the candle maker, the people in the local dealerships. Now, my experience and forgive me guys for all of you out there, but my experience of local dealerships and van sales and commercial vehicles, an electric vehicle, sorry, is not great. So I know that there are many of the sales teams out there that are not really turned on to electric at all.
They don't enjoy it. They don't understand the different technology. They're not getting people's bums on seats so that they can test all of the different vehicles. And I think we're missing an opportunity, missing a trick here, because there is a lot of people that are doing 40, 50 miles a day at most, because what they're doing is driving to their job and working. And then they're driving home. And these are the sort of van drivers that do have a driveway, that do have the ability to charge at home and are not having to worry about charging on the hoof across the motorways and going up and the hill down there. And they're perhaps not carrying a ton at full speed on the M1.
That's not the cohort that we're after at the minute. It's the smaller, more local operations that are more effective at this. Still doing reasonable mileage, because the vehicles easily do north of 150 miles without too much problems. Which most people who are driving to the job and doing the job are. I was in Dublin recently, and I was speaking to an EV taxi driver. And again, he is the type of people you're talking about. He can charge at home. He charges at night. It's 7.9 cents per kilowatt. It stacks up. I said, what about infrastructure? He says, who cares? By the way, I'm in Dublin. When am I ever going to do more miles? I can't charge at night.
It's impossible for me to do. Now, if someone wants a trip to Cork, you know what? I'll take him to Cork because it's worth my while to sit at the fast driver that when I'm there for however long, I can get back. I didn't realize it's charging at home for the corporates. If you can charge at home, electric vehicle, I hate this phrase. I hate that no, bro. But it almost is. It almost is. My wife, Emma, she resisted EV for a while. She's probably a petrol head herself there. But the other bit I love, when people go EV, the second time EVs, she wouldn't change now. And of course, it just stacks up for so many van drivers.
But you're making a fantastic make-up. As you said, it's that total cost of ownership that I don't think, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, Simon, but I don't think dealers are used to selling total cost of ownership. They're used to selling a lease cost. They're used to selling a list price, but they're not necessarily used to yet of selling this whole life cost, which has been sold by the lease coast for quite some time. But we now need to embed that in the whole van. That's a whole EV range. Again, on the car guy, you know, vans, but the EV versus diesel cost equation, it must be day and day out what you're doing.
One big question for any business is cost. So in your views, how does the electric vehicle stack up compared to the diesel? OK. How do you advise the fleets and dealers to assess the total cost of ownership? On EVs versus diesel. So there's a number of things around the total cost of ownership model. Big question, I'm sure. Yeah. And obviously, it depends on the list price. And the list price is changing. So we know that companies like Renault, for instance, have brought out the Renault Master with a good size battery, a decent payload and a good amount of space in that Renault Master. And they brought it out at a price that is right on the cusp of the diesel price.
And if you go to their sort of dealer contract hire tool, you'll find that it's actually cheaper than the diesel. So the residuals are higher on the electric then? If they should. So let's hear. You would think that. But the reality is that the residual value of an electric van at the moment is it's probably a subject that needs a lot more time and attention because it's in a bit of a state of flux. And I think there's a whole podcast or five to do about that. But yes, it's better on a contract. And I think you've got to recognise that you need to run it over three or four or five years. There's vehicles coming into the market just one year old.
There's a lot of nearly new pre-registration vehicles that are causing a little bit of ripple in the early months of the new vehicles coming out. But once we get to three, four, and five years, it gets to be a more settled market. And it's about running them for the right length of contract. So number one is get the contract length right, of course. Number two is understand where you can charge and how much that energy is going to cost you. So you might as a business, you might have off-peak charging overnight and you might peak in the day. So charge at the right time. And similarly with the home tariff, if you're a small business and you're charging at home overnight, use the tariffs.
There's 7.9 cents are something like seven pence for some charging tariffs with some companies like Octopus and Overo and there are others out there, of course, but seek out the right tariff. But then understand that you're going to do a lot less maintenance on this vehicle. So maintenance, not tires, but maintenance on the vehicles is around about 50% of your existing costs. So you're going to halve that. Tires typically evidence would say, and a lot of people we hear the rumor mill that says, are you going to take a charge on this? You don't though. Yeah, absolutely. It don't because it's exactly regeneration and the same in the van world. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And people say, well, the vehicles are heavier.
No, they're not because they are three and a half ton. And they're three and a half ton of vans, whether they've got more battery and less payload or whatever, then they all are the same. My apologies. And EV9 is heavy compared to something else, but there's it has to be three and a half ton, of course. Indeed. But the EV9, I will say, is one car that I will talk about. I love that car. That is an amazing car. Took at the Scotland. Anybody thinking about an EV9, get your ass in it. It is gorgeous. Is it two and a half? Almost three ton, I think. It's a good two and a half ton for sure.
But if that's what floats ship, that's a good car. Anyway, vans. Come back to van's pool. Yes. Yeah. So the tire argument is definitely one that is it'll come and go depending on how you drive. So if you put your foot to the floor every time you pull away, because a lot more talk in an electric vehicle, you'll go from 0 to 30 in particular, much, much quicker than you will do in a diesel, which is great when you're at a roundabout, at a junction, filtering in traffic, all of those kinds of things. You've got much, much more control over your vehicle than you would have in a diesel. And I challenge you to not enjoy driving a vehicle up to 30, 40 miles an hour in particular, just being able to utilise it better.
I believe very firmly that it's much safer, because you're able to access those areas. You're not in the wrong gear on the roundabout. And if you're a van driver, you've driven vans, that feeling of traffic descending on you or a truck coming at you, because you're in the wrong gear in the wrong place at the wrong time, won't happen with an electric vehicle. They're all automatic, of course. Most people say, oh, you know, I'll have one when it's an automatic, because that makes like, well, they are automatic. You can have that comment, you know. Someone's actually said that. Yes. It was a few years ago, and they said, well, I'll have an electric vehicle when they make an automatic one.
Well, there you go, mate. There you go. Done. Time's way. Would you like it in white or red? I thought with the van, man, you might get the opposite. I want to beat Lewis Hamilton on the weekends. I want to change gears. And actually, if the acceleration is quicker, is that a concern for some fleet managers? Yes. I've got people want to be racing car drivers. They want to drag the van off. And I suppose, if you've got vans dragging off at the lights with your corporate name on the back of it, that must be an issue for some fleets. Of course, it's going to be an issue for some fleets. And there are some quite incredible vehicles out there, you know, in terms of acceleration and performance and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, the Ford, so to give you an example, the Ford eTransit custom and the eTransit have brake horsepower over 200. So and it's my humble opinion, that is too much. And it needs to be controllable. Now it actually is controllable through their battery management systems and their engine management systems. All of those kinds of things come in and you can sort of program those to be more fleet favorable. But the reality is telematics in a lot of the big fleets and data that comes to those fleet managers can identify where drivers need a little bit of help. But that's nothing new. Okay. I can remember back in 2000 being on the M6 and a sprint event right up my house.
Okay. And I was on the speed limit, if anyone's listening to this. Okay. But this this sprint event was right up my bum. And I'll go the other way. He was going a lot more than I was doing. Yes. This is nothing new, is it? It's nothing new. But what we will see is that people will begin to appreciate that actually electric vehicles, I don't think we'll ever get past the fact that we're they're not really designed for like really high speed. Now the cars, the Teslas will go very quickly up to the short period and included in the speed limit. But if you're driving them at there towards their limit at high speeds, you will utilize your battery much quicker than you would do otherwise.
It's like, you know, if we're doing multiple tasks on our computers and we're charging things off of it and doing all that sort of stuff, we'll use the battery quicker. And it's that same thing. But with vans, of course, it's exponential because of the fact that you're driving a brick through the air, the as you get to the higher speeds, the the air drag coefficients really begin to ramp up and it really drives down that range. So, you know, 60 miles an hour, 50, 60, 70 miles an hour top end, but going beyond 70 miles an hour, first of all is illegal. But second of all, it's really damaging to range. So my my prediction for one of the better word is that we will see less sort of sprinters charging up the outside lane and doing that sort of stuff.
Although I'm sure there will always be the odd one or two, but they'll be they'll be quickly cotailed, I think. And telematics nowadays is really controlling so much of that. Absolutely. And data, AI, all of these kinds of things are going to be kicking in. And the future of the future of vans will will include autonomous vehicles. It's going to, you know, we're going to see all of this come into fruition. And I think we are already seeing the changing of the landscape, even with the diesel vehicles that are on the road, they're driving more sensibly. This happens less. Yes, there's still those independent ones. But I think I think the world is being managed more.
And I think generally speaking, that's a good thing, particularly when it leans to safety. There's something I want to talk lots about because when this podcast comes out, probably about six weeks ago now in Austin, Elon Musk has launched the Robotaxi. And if you go and watch that journey there, he was saying how many of this autonomous vehicles, how many jobs it will replace. And it's got to be that delivery van has got to be high up on the agenda. So I do definitely want to talk about that. But coming back for a second here, are you hearing you said, Rod at the beginning that the driver can kill any deal? And I know that I was doing some work early on in my career for L.D.V.
And so I know and this is before the Chinese bought them out. Okay. And when people say, yeah, but the drivers just won't buy it. The drivers don't like it. The drivers just so the driver can kill a deal. What's your experience when the van man goes electric? Do they want to go electric again? Is it the same experience we're getting from when people go electric cars, they want to go again and again? Yeah, that's a really good question. So again, you know, van drivers don't have that same level of choice that car drivers have. True. But still an influence. Yeah, absolutely. This is an influence. And to that L.D.V. deal, I know the story that when L.D.V.
piled a load of vehicles into the raw mail, the raw mail drivers were literally going around the vehicle and defecting the vehicle in order not to have to drive it. Now, I've told that story, and it don't to me many, many times. And one day it happened. I had the fleet manager that said, that is absolutely true. I was there. I was like, wow, brilliant. It's really confirmed. But drivers can make or break a deal. You're absolutely right. And I think the van drivers of today, when they get into an electric vehicle, particularly if they don't have the trouble of charging it. And what I mean by that is having to sort of fight their way onto public charging and deal with the public in that respect, because the public don't like you're using my charger.
Well, it's not yours. It's just like I'm a petrol station, you know, but it just takes a little bit longer. And you know, I've got livery down the side of my vehicle and it says I'm X, Y, and Z company. Even the Salvation Army got complaints for charging their vans at public charge points. Charity. Wow. Even the charity. Yeah. Even the charity. But the driving experience for the drivers is so much easier, so much quieter, so much smoother. There are lots of plus ones. And also all electric vehicles, the vast majority have a really high specification. And that's true of the diesel vehicles as well these days. I know. But typically speaking, so if you take the Ford, there is no leader in the electric world.
It starts at a trend. So it's already got a slightly better spec than other vehicles that would be in the... I've manufactured just doing that to offset the higher costs of producing it. So they start... I don't know. Yeah. Could be doing that. Or just looking to produce less models so that they are only doing things once. So I don't really know. But the reality is that the drivers generally speaking have a positive experience. And I don't believe that when they come to changing, as long as they've addressed the charging experience, they've addressed that sort of operational experience that can... It only revolves around charging. Can be problematic from time to time. Then they'll be absolutely 100% up for replacing electric with electric.
Because why would you go back to a noisy gear changey diesel when you can just kind of smoothly drive off into the distance? It makes no sense. And the range anxiety in the main is gone now. Sure. If you're driving to Edinburgh from Plymouth, you're not having that conversation. Everyone understands that. But again, as you said, so many people are driving around down, delivering stuff short distance. The last mile. So it is the last mile. But also what we've got to recognize, if you go to the DFT and they're figures, you will see that they're doing around 20,000 miles a year on average, across all vans. So that's the corporate world, 20,000 for any van that's under three years old.
And that's 80 miles a day on a five day week over 50 weeks of the year. That's kind of where it's at. And there will be extremes. But most of those extremes are capable or dealable with with most batteries today. And we're seeing on small vans, ranges over the ID buzzers got a range of, I think, 285 miles. So that's possible in the small van world. You've got the medium vans with ranges of up over 230, 240 miles. And then you've got the large vans, which actually some of them have the largest range, in fact, because you've got the Renault Master with 285. You've got the extended range for transit at 249. You've got the Mervano's at 260 and Mercedes-sprinter at 270.
These are significant ranges. And most of the time, particularly with the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and the Renault Master, they're getting really close to those ranges. That's been proven, even with weight in, winter does affect the range a little bit. But range anxiety is really not something. As long as you make a conscious choice, you don't just get forced into it. And the vehicle's got to be fit for purpose. And if you're not doing your due diligence as you're buying a vehicle, because the right vehicle to buy is the one that does the job. And if it's diesel, buy the diesel. And if it's electric, buy the electric. Don't just buy the electric ticker box and win a contract to do something where you're going to regret it.
That's not the way that we successfully make this transition. We make the transition successfully by finding the right vehicle to do the right job for the right person. That just leads me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the Motor Trade can be found on our website simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett through LinkedIn. Thank you.
