As more electric-powered commercial vehicles enter the market, fuel card operators like FleetCor must confront a future where gas stations become less relevant.
FleetCor estimates that 20% to 50% of EVs will be owned by businesses by 2030 — and charging vehicles at drivers’ homes overnight will be a key approach, introducing payment complexities that don’t exist with traditional gasoline and diesel fleet fill-ups.
“Home is an important location for EV charging, and we’re working on solving the payment challenges around that,” said Alan King, who oversees FleetCor’s EV strategy for fleets.
FleetCor already has laid a lot of groundwork for its leap to EV fuel cards. The company is now moving into a new phase of acquisitions, investments and partnerships to develop EV charging payment solutions to support a mix of EV and traditional fuel cards in the next several years, according to King.
Alan King, FleetCor's group president for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand fuel.
Fuel cards currently account for only about 40% of FleetCor's revenue, after years of diversification. But the Norcross, Ga-.based corporation sees itself having a leadership role in the global EV charging market, which is expected to grow from under $2 billion today to more than $28 billion by 2028, according to Grand View Research.
A tipping point will eventually come as governments around the world push incentives for EVs that are driving new use cases for payments to power the vehicles. In the U.K., a recent rule change freed fleet drivers from paying personal taxes on the benefit of driving a company car, as long as the vehicle is electric.
Just as with fuel cards, cloud-based systems and apps to track and manage payments for vehicle charging are crucial to corporations, so FleetCor will be able to adapt many of those reporting tools, along with automatically tracking taxes and tariffs to minimize driver paperwork and errors, King said.
This month FleetCor made a minority investment in Mina, a U.K.-based EV charging solution whose software enables a fleet cars to be charged at home or on the road, directly billing the fleet operators so the driver need not submit a separate invoice for reimbursement.
An EV charger is installed at a driver’s home at a cost of about $800-$1,000 and Mina’s software connects it to the utility company to separate commercial vehicle charges from other household electric charges.
“Through Mina’s solution, the fleet car driver doesn’t have to worry about separating personal and work charging costs, it’s very neat and clean,” King said.
FleetCor hopes to adapt Mina’s technology in other regions, because it’s one of the few solutions whose technology can be easily integrated with any utility company, King said.
FleetCor in recent years has been investing in other EV charging resources. In 2011 FleetCor purchased AllStar, a leading U.K. fleet card provider whose dual-purpose payment card that works for fuel or EV charging.
Five years ago FleetCor acquired Travelcard, one of the leading fuel card issuers in the Netherlands, which supports a popular RFID key fob-based EV charging payment solution for fleet drivers.
As FleetCard's U.K.-based group president for Europe, Australia and New Zealand, King has a bird’s-eye view of the regions with the most advanced EV charging technology and availability.
“Europe is at the forefront of technology for EV payments, though it’s a mixed bag, with quite a bit of activity in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands and nothing much happening in Russia or eastern and central parts of Europe,” King said.
The disparities in systems that support EV charging will require a lot of coordination, and FleetCor wants to be an industry hub for EV charging technology and payments.
“Different companies already are adopting different methods for EV charging and we must find ways to work with most of them," King said. "Our goal is to use strategic partnerships to streamline and expand the best approaches."
There is much industry friction to overcome, according to King.
“EV charging equipment manufacturers haven’t come up with standards yet so fleets have to subscribe to multiple networks to charge their vehicles, though we’re seeing a bit more interoperability in continental Europe,” he said.
Last year FleetCor processed 3 million EV transactions for fleets in Europe, and the company expects to see transaction volume surge this year, with other regions including the U.S. still relatively undeveloped. Some of FleetCor’s fuel cards in Europe can be used for both EV and fossil fuel payments, and some will be EV-only, he said.
“It’s early days in the EV charging arena for fleets and things are still ambiguous but there is tremendous growth and innovation that we expect to build on through investments, partnerships and solutions we’re building ourselves,” King said.
