Thinking about leasing electric cars or vans for your team, but you’re not quite sure where they’ll actually charge? You’re in the right place. It’s the question we get asked most often by business owners considering the switch, and the one that’s easiest to get expensively wrong.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you upfront: the chargers matter more than the cars. Get the charging setup right and electric leasing is genuinely brilliant for a small business. Get it wrong and you’ve got frustrated drivers, surprise running costs, and a lease that doesn’t quite fit how your team actually works.
This guide walks you through the decisions to sort out before you sign anything, in plain English, with a checklist at the end you can work through with your team.
Start with the chargers, not the car
Most business owners come to us with a vehicle in mind. They’ve seen a nice electric SUV, the monthly figure looks reasonable, and the conversation begins there. We always gently steer it back a step.
The vehicle is the easy part. The charging setup is what determines whether your drivers love their new car or quietly resent it. It’s also what decides the real running cost, which is often the difference between a lease that looks good on a quote and one that genuinely saves your business money once it’s on the road.
Sort the charging first, and the electric car leasing decision becomes a lot simpler.
AC versus DC: what you actually need to know
Two types of charging, and the difference matters more than the jargon suggests.
AC charging is what you’ll install at the workplace in almost every case. These are the units mounted on walls or short posts in car parks, usually delivering 7kW or 22kW. A full charge takes anywhere from four to ten hours depending on the car. That sounds slow until you remember the vehicle is sitting there all day anyway.
DC charging is the rapid stuff at motorway services and supermarkets. It delivers 50kW upwards and tops a car up in 20 to 40 minutes. Brilliant for the occasional long trip. Not the right answer for a workplace, where a single unit can run into the tens of thousands once you’ve factored in the grid upgrade.
For nearly every business with one to twenty staff, the sensible setup is straightforward: AC chargers at work, home chargers where drivers have off-street parking, public DC for the occasional long haul. If you want to go deeper on range and real-world charging, our page on EV charging and range covers it properly.
Dedicated or shared chargers?
This is where business owners often agonise, and it’s worth a bit of thought.
Dedicated chargers mean one unit per driver, one bay each. Simple, no awkward conversations about whose turn it is, no diary clashes. The downside is cost, space, and the load it puts on your electrical supply. Six drivers means six chargers, six bays, and quite possibly an upgrade to your incoming supply.
Shared chargers suit teams who aren’t all in every day, or where the EV rollout is gradual. One unit can comfortably serve two or three drivers if you stagger usage. Modern smart chargers handle load balancing automatically, so you’re not tripping the main fuse every time two cars plug in.
A useful rule of thumb we share with clients:
| Your situation | Likely best fit |
|---|---|
| All drivers in daily, all on EVs | One dedicated charger per driver |
| Mixed team, hybrid working, gradual rollout | One shared charger per two or three drivers |
| Drivers mostly out on the road, brief office stops | One or two 22kW units, shared |
| Drivers can mostly charge at home | Minimal workplace charging, top-ups only |
The right answer depends on how your team actually works, not on what looks tidy on a site plan. A quick conversation with your drivers about their typical week will tell you more than any spec sheet.
Grants and funding: what’s currently available
There’s government support for workplace charging, but the schemes get revised and the figures change. Rather than quote numbers that may be stale by the time you read this, here’s what to look up.
The main scheme is the Workplace Charging Scheme, run by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV). It offers a per-socket grant towards buying and installing chargers, up to a set maximum number of sockets per business.
Three practical points clients always appreciate knowing:
- The grant must be claimed by an OZEV-authorised installer, so check your electrician is approved before they quote. Plenty aren’t.
- You pay the full invoice, then receive the grant back. Budget for the gross figure in your cashflow.
- Some local councils run their own top-up schemes. Worth a five-minute search before you commit.
Always confirm current grant values and eligibility with your accountant or directly via the OZEV scheme before you sign anything, because the rules do genuinely change.
How charging decisions shape the lease itself
This is the bit most brokers skip, and it’s where having someone in your corner earns its keep.
The charging setup you choose feeds directly into three lease decisions.
Mileage allowance. Drivers with reliable workplace and home charging will happily do higher annual mileage in an EV. Limited charging access pushes you towards vehicles with bigger batteries, which costs more on the monthly. If the numbers stop working at that point, it’s an honest sign that electric isn’t quite the right fit yet, and we’d rather tell you that than sell you something you’ll regret.
Vehicle choice. A driver who only charges at work three days a week needs a longer-range car than one who plugs in at home every night. Smaller EVs work beautifully for short commutes with home charging. They’re a poor fit for a sales rep doing 25,000 miles a year without a home charger. We’ve seen both ends of that, and the difference in driver happiness is night and day.
Contract length. EV technology is still moving quickly. A shorter lease (two or three years) keeps you flexible as battery ranges improve. A longer one locks in today’s monthly cost but commits you to today’s technology. There’s no universal right answer, only the one that fits your business.
If you’re weighing up whether the numbers stack up at all, our guide to what you’ll save with an electric lease walks through the real-world figures.
Your pre-lease checklist
Before you sign anything, work through this with your team:
- Survey your site. Where will chargers physically sit? Is there space, and is the parking secure overnight?
- Check your electrical capacity. More than two chargers often means a supply upgrade. An OZEV-approved electrician will tell you in a single visit.
- Decide dedicated or shared. Map it against how often each driver is actually at the office.
- Get two or three quotes from OZEV-approved installers. Check they’ll handle the grant claim for you.
- Confirm grant eligibility. Look up the current Workplace Charging Scheme value and check your business qualifies.
- Talk to your landlord. If you rent, you’ll need their written consent in advance. This is the single most common cause of delays we see.
- Survey your drivers. Who has off-street parking? Who could install a home charger? This is what really shapes how much workplace charging you need.
- Match the lease to the charging reality. Vehicles, mileage and contract length should follow from what your team can realistically charge, not the other way round.
- Plan for growth. Adding EVs in 12 or 24 months? Install the cabling for extra chargers now. Retrofitting later is properly expensive.
Work through this before you start talking monthly figures, and you’ll make a much better decision.
Where to go from here
Going electric is the right move for most small business fleets, but only when the charging side has been properly thought through. The businesses that struggle with EVs are almost always the ones who bought the car first and worried about charging later.
We deliberately work with a small number of clients so we’ve got the time to look at the whole picture with you, not just quote a monthly figure and hope it works out. That means sitting down properly, understanding how your drivers actually use their vehicles, and matching the lease to the charging setup that makes sense for your team.
If that sounds like the kind of help you’d value, we’re easy to reach. Have a look at our electric car leasing page for the overview, or a bit about how we work if you’d like to get a feel for us first.
When you’re ready for a proper conversation rather than a quote form, drop us a line.
