With the ZEV mandate requiring 24% of new van sales to be zero-emission in 2026, rising toward 70% by 2030, fleet operators are under growing pressure to move quickly. But speed without the right data can create operational problems that set back a fleet’s transition.
Simon Ridley, Managing Director at Dawsongroup vans, a nationwide commercial van rental company specialising in long-term fixed-term rental agreements to meet specific business needs, has seen this first-hand.
“The question most fleet managers ask is, how many electric vans do they need? The more useful question is which vans, on which routes? Those are two very different conversations, and the answer to the second one changes everything.”
New analysis from Dawsongroup vans, drawn from 12 months of real-world telematics data across 49 electric light commercial vehicles, sheds some light on this area. The findings show that annual mileage and route type directly influence how efficiently electric vans perform, with some deployment scenarios delivering far stronger results than others.
The Mileage Range That Delivers the Strongest Results
Across the dataset, which covered vehicles travelling anywhere from under 10,000 to more than 45,000 miles per year, the most efficient performance was consistently recorded in vans covering between 10,000 and 25,000 miles annually. These vehicles, typically deployed on urban multi-drop work, suburban service routes, and local field operations, were able to make full use of the characteristics that give electric vans their efficiency advantage, including, frequent stopping, lower average speeds, and energy recovery through regenerative braking.
According to statistics from Uswitch van, the average annual mileage for van drivers in the UK was 8,232 miles, meaning that the majority of working vans are well within the range where electric vehicles tend to perform best.
“When electric vans are used on predictable urban and suburban duty cycles, they can deliver reliable performance all year round,” says Ridley. “The routes that work best for electrification are usually the ones fleet managers already know inside out. The daily mileage is consistent, the vehicles return to base each evening, and overnight depot charging removes most of the uncertainty.”
The Routes Where Electric Vans Struggle Most
Vehicles covering long annual distances, especially those operating on motorway-heavy routes, showed suppressed efficiency throughout the year rather than only during colder months. At sustained higher speeds, electric vans lose much of the efficiency advantage they carry in stop-start urban driving, and the performance gap between mileage bands holds in summer period, when conditions across the fleet are most favourable.
Dawsongroup’s data shows that winter conditions reduce usable range by a further 30 to 40% across the fleet, which means vehicles already consuming more energy year-round face the greatest operational pressure when temperatures drop.
The 2025 Arval Mobility Observatory Barometer found that around a third of fleets are already running electric vans on routes covering more than 100 miles a day, and for those operators, battery capacity and charging access need to be planned carefully rather than left to chance.
“Higher-mileage routes are not unsuitable for electric vans, but they do demand a more disciplined approach,” says Ridley. “That means specifying vehicles with larger battery capacities, building charging into the working day rather than relying on it happening opportunistically, and setting route lengths around worst-case winter performance rather than summer averages.”
Why Route Planning Should Drive Your Electrification Strategy
The mileage band findings suggest that electrification planning should start with routes, not vehicles. Before deciding which electric van to adopt, fleet managers are best to begin with identifying which existing routes are most practical for electrification, looking at annual mileage, daily distances, payload demands, and where vehicles can realistically charge at the end of a shift.
There are currently seven charging clean air zones across England, with London’s ULEZ operating separately across the entire city, and Scotland running four low emission zones. For fleet operators running urban routes in any of these areas, the cost of keeping non-compliant diesel vans on the road is already a live operational expense, and one that will only grow as further restrictions are introduced. Electric vans exempt from those charges deliver an immediate cost saving on the routes where the efficiency data is strongest.
Fleets with a mix of route types tend to find that a phased approach works best, beginning with runs that fall within the optimal mileage band, which builds operational confidence, produces usable performance data, and allows both charging infrastructure and strategy to be refined before tackling heavier or longer-distance work.
“The fleets getting this right are not trying to make electric vans work everywhere at once. They are starting with the routes where the vehicles perform best and building from there,” says Ridley. “Get that right and the performance figures do the talking. When it is not, confidence in the transition tends to unravel quickly.”
