On a day in which Swedish-Chinese car company Volvo announced that it will only be selling 100% electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030, Origin Energy and Custom Fleet announced that they’re teaming up to provide a solution to EV fleet transition in Australia.
Origin 360 EV Fleet is being branded by Origin Energy as a “one-stop shop for EV fleet procurement, management and charging.” A possible solution to the slow EV uptake in Australia, particularly among fleet cars, which make up almost half of all new vehicle sales in Australia.
The idea is to take all the stress away from fleet business customers by fully arranging their EV transition, charging infrastructure, load management and carbon neutral travel through carbon offsets.
Tony Lucas, executive general manager of Future Energy at Origin, said that “Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 will require action across our economy, particularly transportation which is the third largest source of emissions in the country, making accelerating the uptake of EVs in Australia a crucial piece of the puzzle.”
Shifting to EVs, as Lucas makes clear, should not be a difficult decision, “EVs are cheaper to run, allowing Origin to help businesses to reduce their operating costs.”
“Origin is ideally placed to support businesses to electrify their transportation,” Lucas continued, “with Origin 360 EV Fleet a natural extension of the range of clean energy products and services we already provide to our business customers, including solar and battery solutions.”
This is not the first time Origin and Custom Fleet have teamed up, after working together on Origin’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) funded EV smart charging trial last year. The ongoing two-year trial provided 150 smart chargers to current EV owners and EV fleet managers, connecting them to Origin’s virtual power plant (VPP) platform — an initiative it pioneered in late 2018 with the Victorian Labor Government.
According to Origin’s half FY results, release in February, the company has installed 38 MW of residential and commercial solar in this half year, representing a 47% increase from HY2020. It is hoped that this figure will continue to rise, especially if commercial solar solutions are provided in tandem with fleet transitions to EVs.
“This strategic agreement with Origin will very much combine the strengths and expertise in each of our respective businesses” said Aaron Baxter, CEO of Custom Fleet Australia and New Zealand, “and place us at the forefront to help even more Australian businesses achieve their sustainability goals.”
Origin is also walking the walk insofar as it has joined EV100 and committed to transition its own 600-strong fleet of cars to EVs by 2030.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.