There’s no denying the numbers. If you want to run a more efficient fleet, reduce your company’s carbon emissions, and significantly lower fuel costs, electric vehicles are the answer. Combine those benefits with the many federal and state rebates and tax incentives (such as those in California ), and it’s clear that now is the best time to convert your fleet.
You don’t need a massive infrastructure overhaul to charge all those cars. In fact, Somerville, Massachusetts-based MoveEV says the best, most efficient place to charge your EVs is at your employees’ homes. The company has developed software and solutions, including ReimburseEV , to make reimbursing your employees for their charging costs precise, easy, and IRS-compliant.
MoveEV is the brainchild of David Lewis, founder and CEO, a mobility expert and strategist with experience as an investment banker and as a B2B software executive, with emphasis on transforming tech-enabled services to SaaS. His co-founder and head of marketing, Kate Harrison, is a serial entrepreneur, best-selling author and thought leader with a background in environmental law and policy.
“We founded MoveEV in 2021 as it became evident that EVs were working really well in Europe and we wanted them to work better in the United States, so we studied why Europe was progressing so much faster than we were,” Lewis told California Business Journal.
“It’s because corporate programs there have spurred electrification and encouraged employees to adopt. With MoveEV, our mission is to scale EV adoption in the U.S. through similar corporate programs. We have identified the gaps impeding scalability and one of them is reimbursing for charging at home. This is a way to decentralize the grid, which is our specialty. We’ve created software to scale electric vehicle adoption with accurate at-home charging reimbursement and we have solutions for both fleets and commuting employees.”
Lewis and Harrison have targeted their company to the B2B space, with an emphasis on getting companies to realize they don’t need to have massive infrastructure to begin converting their fleets to EVs. In fact, the money is available now and the sooner companies start, the more they’ll save.
“One-fifth of all emissions in the country are from our cars and 150 million drive to work and another 20 million are fleet vehicles,” Lewis says. “The fastest thing you can do to lower your carbon footprint is switch to EVs. Any time you pay for electricity instead of gas, it’s a financial win. When you can remove the other noise and focus on cost savings, which is what fleet management is all about, you can start making a cultural shift in your organization. Similar to how healthcare and retirement savings are provided by your employer, making the transition to electric – as it’s been proven in other countries – can significantly drive adoption.”
Though it is happening faster and faster, there are still logical and logistical barriers that are impeding Americans from embracing electrification on the personal and organizational level. one of them being tracking. find out about truck tracking on Fleet Logging .
“There are a few different things driving this but the technology is getting better over time, and we see more companies and individuals getting interested in EVs every day,” Harrison says. “The initial hesitation was new-tech fear. People are used to going to a gas station and they know how the engine works. EVs are different and require a new way of thinking and new routines. Any change inspires some fear. I think the supply chain issues for fleet adoption was initially a challenge, especially in California where companies faced multiyear waiting lists for newer models, but there are more and more options coming out every year. The third big hurdle to adoption was range anxiety. The early EVs, from 10 years ago, only got 70 to 100 miles on a charge. I have a 2012 Nissan Leaf with a 44-mile range and it works for me but is a very different experience than my husband, who has a Tesla that can drive from Maryland to Pennsylvania on one charge. Concerns about charging have dissipated as the ranges are now the same as gas engines.”
A huge advantage EVs have that gas engines don’t is the ability to refuel at your own home, where your car is anyway. Some companies see the building of charging infrastructure as prohibitive for their fleet conversion but in fact, the cheapest, easiest, most efficient way to charge those vehicles is at your employees’ homes. You don’t need to install 300 chargers to have 300 EVs in your fleet. Many users are fine with a level-one charger – or basic outside outlet – and don’t even need additional equipment.
Reimbursement for using an employees’ power has caused issues in the past. Failure to reimburse properly can subject an organization to legal challenges under the California Labor Code (Section 2802 ). With the launch of ReimburseEV , MoveEV has a software solution for it. The innovative green-tech product can calculate exactly what the employee is owed, making this expense reimbursement hassle-free.
MoveEV is the brainchild of David Lewis, Founder and CEO “In the past, when you gave someone a gasoline-powered vehicle, you also gave them a credit card and the expense was billed back to the company,” Lewis says. “It’s very clear. Now if you give someone a fleet vehicle and want them to charge primarily at home, you can’t stick a credit card into your house. What we’ve done is solved that problem by inventing the receipt for charging at home.”
Incidentally, just because the car is plugged in, it doesn’t mean it’s consuming electricity. Newer vehicles can be set to charge to 80%, for instance, for optimum battery health and that’s all it will charge. Also, the calculation of how much electricity the car is consuming compared to the rest of the house is factored into the IRS-compliant receipt. MoveEV knows how many kilowatts are consumed by the vehicle and that information is then combined with utility data. The employee only needs to take a picture of their power bill, upload it to the system once a month, and they’re done.
“We reimburse from actual kilowatts used and the actual utility expenses, down to the user level,” Lewis says. “In a very transparent way, you can see the accuracy of what the employers are reimbursing. And you can be paid that money tax free, which saves the company around 7% and saves the employee over 30% or whatever their income tax bracket is. This protects the employer from leaving itself open to class action lawsuits. With our methodology, the employee has confidence they are being treated fairly and there’s incentive to charge at home.”
Lewis and Harrison say car-charging habits are often personal and closely follow the personality types of phone charging. If you’re the type of person who never lets your phone get below 70%, you’re likely to be the same with your car. Those with high-range vehicles will likely refuel only when they need it, like we do with gas.
Co-Founder and Head of Marketing, Kate Harrison “Car batteries are actually very different from phone and computer batteries as they don’t die in that same way,” Harrison says. “Everyone has had the experience of their phone taking hours to go to 50% and then dropping exponentially faster after that, but car batteries don’t do that. They use roughly the same power throughout the charge and degrade very slowly – usually around 10% over a 10-year period.”
With the incentives, fuel savings, and significantly lowering carbon emissions, there is no reason to wait. Organizations can begin cycling EVs into their fleets with or without a huge charging infrastructure investment. Think about a charge-at-home-first approach to EVs.
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