The top 4 benefits of hybrid and electric cars for businesses

You may have already caught one of our biggest bits of recent news at Intack Self Drive – our brand new electric van hire range! Though electric vehicles have undeniably been something of a political football in the past few years, there’s no question that the market is ultimately moving in this direction – it’s just a matter of how quickly that will happen. We like to stay on the cutting edge here at Intack, so we’re expanding our range early – enabling you to get a better feel for the benefits they can provide you. We’ve already touched on some of the key benefits of hybrid and electric vehicle hire in our announcement post from last week – but here are a few more it’s worth highlighting!

Electric vehicles are great for last-mile trips

One of the biggest concerns surrounding electric vehicles at the moment is the range; they’re still not quite up to managing the cross-country distances of ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. However, for ‘last-mile’ trips, i.e. during the final leg of a multi-stage delivery journey, or for direct deliveries to local addressed.

Range might be tricky for long trips, but for short journeys, electric vehicles are highly reliable, enjoyably efficient, and more or less all of them are automatic. That means they’re useful in city centres with a lot of traffic, where there’s typically a lot of stopping and starting, and shifting up and down through the gears – which can quickly become tiresome if you’re driving a manual car. Electric and hybrid cars are quite pleasant, comfortable drives, too!

Electric car hire can be useful as a trial run for expanding your fleet

The date for petrol and diesel sale bans has been pushed back in the last couple of weeks, but there’s no question that it’s going to come into force eventually. And when that happens, the businesses who fare best will be the ones who aren’t caught completely off-guard.

That’s where electric vehicle hire can come in handy, especially with our range at Intack. It can provide a useful “try-before-you-buy” measure to help you work out exactly how best to integrate future electric vehicles into your fleet – giving you an advance look at all the practical considerations and benefits that entail. That can then give you a good grounding to help get your business ready so you can eventually make the switch long-term.

Reduce your carbon footprint as a business

There’s been growing pressure in recent years for businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, and especially for those working in the transport and logistics industry. So if you already have internal sustainability targets you’re aiming to meet, making the switch to electric vehicle hire could give you that extra push you need to achieve them. Tying into the experimental aspect we’ve discussed above, it can be useful to start small when it comes to changing vehicles in your fleet, so that you can get a good idea of what the future holds, without compromising your ability to maintain day-to-day operations.

Electric vehicles can be useful not only for reducing your carbon emissions in the short-term, but also for helping you to project how much carbon emissions you can save in the medium to long-term, too. And on that note…

Improve your CSR and ESG ratings

As well as internal goals you may have set yourself, adopting electric vehicles is a great way to demonstrate to your customers and partners that you’re looking ahead to the future. Research has consistently shown that customers prefer companies who make greener choices, so it can be a useful way to get the edge over your competitors.

Crucially, a study by the Business of Sustainability found that 78% of customers want to buy primarily from environmentally friendly companies, but don’t know how to identify them. Green measures like electric vehicles can go a long way towards persuading those buyers, effectively helping you to corner a new segment of the market.

This is just a sample of the potential benefits, of course – you may well be able to find one or two even more specific ones for your business! Whatever the case, if you’re looking to try out some electric vehicles and feel the benefits for yourself, you’re in exactly the right place. Eventually, we’re looking at expanding our fleet with even more vehicles, so you can also enjoy more choices than ever before for electric and hybrid car hire here at Intack. In the meantime though, there’s still plenty to choose from with our current fleet!

Our electric vehicles are the latest additions to more than 450 cars, vans, and minibuses – so if you’re a business user looking for vehicles to meet your company requirements, or just a private customer looking for a personal vehicle for short-term use, you can count on us to have exactly the right vehicle at exactly the right price. Feel free to give us a call on 01254 57811, and we’ll be happy to help however we can!