I work for a large biotech manufacturer doing field work. I – and thousands of other field engineers – are assigned company cars, which are all ICEs.
I have pointed out in the past that this is a mistake: we should at the very least, allow the engineers the choice to select an electric car from the options provided.
The fleet management team tested this out, but ultimately passed up on the option, because they wanted to shift towards reimbursing drivers instead of managing the fleet. They argued that this met everyone’s needs, including allowing employees to drive electric if they want to buy one.
I think this is a big mistake: most people still find the transition complicated when shopping personally, but fleet program can manage a large number of vehicles purchasing, insurance, and maintenance much better, and is better equipped to help people get home chargers if they want. They literally piloted this exact program, and then chose not to expand it.
I want to contact relevant parties and try to assertively communicate that in this moment, we should all be in a war footing. This is an absolute crisis, and the company is clearly looking at simple options to do its part and leaving them unused because it’s not aligned with their preferred proposal.
Can anyone help me collect up the shortest, most direct sources to share a five minute slide deck that says, “WAKE THE F*** UP! ROLL OUT THE PLAN YOU ALREADY SET UP AND TESTED, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY, PEOPLE!”
The company probably doesn’t care about any global emergency.
The convincing argument would be about their total cost of onership.You want to get your hands on any data they collected during their trial. Specifically cost data.
I’d bet they already realized the short term cost of getting the cars and installing chargers is more. That’s likely why they decided against it.Working up the numbers for long term fuel and maintance costs, comparing ICE and BEV, might be convincing. Especially if you can use their own data.
This right here OP, the company doesn’t give a shit about climate. In fact if you go in there and say anything right out the gate about climate emergencies or climate change they’re probably just going to tune you out entirely, shake your hand at the end and say something like “Good presentation, we’ll get back to you” (Read: they won’t)
But start talking about how they can save money and increase profits, now you’re talking their language. Maybe mention climate change at the end as some sort of “secondary benefit” like free marketing or something, but that’d be about it
You are going about this the wrong way. The business doesn’t care about urgency unless it effects their bottom line. Ask any IT person how many times they have had to work stupid hours to fix something a 5 figure purchase would prevent but now the outage is costing then 6 figures.
Approach this from a business mindset. Total cost of ownership, reducing costs, meeting government emission reduction targets.
Specifically look at how much the org spends on reimbursement of fuel and compare it to the cost of electricity.
Maybe speak to a union representative? I mean, aside from the ICE or electric question, the plan to move to privately owned cars is clearly an effort to push hidden costs onto their employees and the union might be interested in preventing that. And once that option is off the table, an electric fleet might become the next best option.
We don’t have a union.
I’d like to form or join one, but we don’t have one at the moment.
