The EV Café

AA calls for learner licence reform to accelerate EV transition without compromising road safety

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

AA calls for learner licence reform to accelerate EV transition without compromising road safetyAA calls for learner licence reform to accelerate EV transition without compromising road safety

The AA warned that current licence rules could slow EV adoption

Latest podcast

Coming 15 Jul

#175 - Paul Jewell | CarCloud#175 - Paul Jewell | CarCloud

Scheduled for 15 Jul 2026

Most households and small businesses don't have an automotive expert on hand, just a relative who gets cornered at barbecues or "someone who used to be a mechanic" now responsible for a multi-million-pound fleet. That gap is the problem Paul Jewell built CarCloud to fix. Paul joins Paul Kirby and Sara Sloman to explain how CarCloud surfaces the MOT deadlines, lease endings and maintenance costs that usually blindside drivers, pairing each one with a solution rather than just a warning. He makes the case for the SME sector, not the big fleets, as the real engine of electric van and car growth. He also covers his work in last-mile transport: 10,000 pedal-assisted, motorcycle-grade electric bikes already on UK roads, care workers using them to fit more home visits into a day, and a new grocery sidecar that carries 40 kilos for around 14p per 50 miles. Along the way Paul traces his approach back to selling used cars in Birmingham's subprime credit era, tells the story of a remarkable homeless man who taught him chess and life lessons as a kid, wishes for baseline foods to be sold "net free" with no VAT or profit attached, and sets out CarCloud's next phase: automotive and mobility banking that returns real value to the driver. **Connect with Paul Jewell:** - LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-jewell-55476122/> - CarCloud: <https://carcloudsolutions.com>

Next event

The EV Café Webinar - 15 July 2026 - Innovation in FleetsThe EV Café Webinar - 15 July 2026 - Innovation in Fleets

15 Jul

2026

11:00 - 12:00 (GMT / BST)

Most common EV warranty claims are not related to powertrain

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

Most common EV warranty claims are not related to powertrainMost common EV warranty claims are not related to powertrain

Royal Mail cuts emissions by almost a third

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

Royal Mail cuts emissions by almost a thirdRoyal Mail cuts emissions by almost a third

More News

Consultation to tighten rules on in-use vehicle emissions launched

By The EV Café Team

// 10 Jul 2026

Consultation to tighten rules on in-use vehicle emissions launchedConsultation to tighten rules on in-use vehicle emissions launched

The Department for Transport has launched a consultation to tighten rules on in‑use vehicle emissions

Most Brits Across All Generations Want an EV Next

By The EV Café Team

// 03 Jul 2026

Most Brits Across All Generations Want an EV NextMost Brits Across All Generations Want an EV Next

Fleets Want to Cut Emissions, But Don’t Know How

By The EV Café Team

// 03 Jul 2026

Fleets Want to Cut Emissions, But Don’t Know HowFleets Want to Cut Emissions, But Don’t Know How

64% of UK businesses want to reduce fleet emissions but don’t know how

Rapid Charger Installations Now Growing Fastest Outside London

By The EV Café Team

// 03 Jul 2026

Rapid Charger Installations Now Growing Fastest Outside LondonRapid Charger Installations Now Growing Fastest Outside London

93% of new 50kW+ chargers installed between April 2024–26 were outside London

Podcast Episodes

#174 - Nikolaus Mayerhofer & Alexander Millinger | Aviloo#174 - Nikolaus Mayerhofer & Alexander Millinger | Aviloo

Published 08 Jul 2026

How do you actually know what's left in a used EV battery? Nikolaus Mayerhofer and Alexander Millinger from **Aviloo** join us to draw the line between a real diagnostic and a glorified readout — and why that difference decides what a second-hand electric car or van is worth. NiKo has been building electric things since he was 12, soldering together his first e-bike back in 1987 and developing battery management systems by 19. That four decades of battery engineering — lead acid, nickel cadmium, lithium iron phosphate, NMC — is now baked into Aviloo's three-minute flash test, which pulls up to 50,000 data samples through the OBD port, sends them to the cloud, and returns an accurate, independent State of Health certificate. Eight years of collected data from thousands of vehicles (over 50 million kilometres) sits behind every result, and (from July) a UK warranty backs each certificate. We get into the things the surface won't tell you: - Why **mileage no longer equals battery health** — a study of 600 Model 3s found consumption varying by a factor of two depending purely on how they were driven and charged - How charging to 100% every night, hammering the autobahn, and preheating all quietly age a pack — and why average degradation is fine but the *variance* is the reason you test before you buy - The honest take on fast charging, solid-state hype, and why a Model S still runs a 40-year-old cell format - Battery second life: diagnostics feeding power storage in Japan, reuse from scrapped vehicles, and what happens when OEMs stop making modules - Scaling Aviloo from two friends talking on mountain bike rides to 100+ people and one million tests sold — across the UK, US, Benelux and Asia **Guests:** - Nikolaus Mayerhofer, Founder & CEO — [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolaus-mayerhofer-014b5635/) - Alexander Millinger — [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmillinger/) - Aviloo — [aviloo.com](https://aviloo.com/)

#173 - Jamie Sands | Welch Group#173 - Jamie Sands | Welch Group

Published 01 Jul 2026

**Guest:** Jamie Sands — Operator-led zero-emission freight and innovation | TwentyForty | Welch Group **Company:** Welch Group ([welchgroup.co.uk](https://welchgroup.co.uk) · [twentyforty.uk](https://twentyforty.uk)) **LinkedIn:** [linkedin.com/in/j-sands](https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-sands/) --- What does a 92-year-old, family-owned haulier with 70 trucks know about the future of freight that the multinationals don't? Quite a lot, it turns out. Jamie Sands is Head of Solutions at Welch Group — a role that, as he points out, doesn't exist in most operators — and he joins us to explain why a regional independent from the east of England is winning tenders against the big 3PLs on something other than price. We get into the commercial logic underneath the green badge: how Welch turns its fleet into a test bed for startups in exchange for preferential terms, why the "green premium" basically doesn't exist, and how being two steps ahead on scope three reporting now wins business outright. Jamie makes the case that decarbonisation is really an energy and infrastructure problem, not a vehicle one — and that the smart play for an operator is treating charging, energy arbitrage and demand response as new revenue, not just a cost to swallow. There's plenty for the technically curious too: system-level thinking across siloed networks, what L4 and L5 autonomy actually mean for hub-to-hub night runs, why he's done arguing about hydrogen, and why "technology neutrality" can quietly become an excuse to do nothing until the 2035 cliff edge arrives. Jamie also walks us through TwentyForty, the not-for-profit he's built to pull other independent operators into the research, the media and the policy conversation — including the 12 Pillars framework for getting the whole industry talking to itself. Away from the trucks, Jamie talks music, comic books, a Project Hail Mary obsession, staying genuinely calm in an industry that runs on chaos, and the loss of a close friend that pushed him to do work that actually matters. He closes with one wish that doubles as his whole mission: that operators — the people this transition is being done *to* — get a seat in the rooms where it's being decided. Plenty of marginal gains, one or two God complexes, and a reminder that the future we're all hoping for is mostly available right now, if we work together. **Connect with Jamie:** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-sands/) **Welch Group:** [welchgroup.co.uk](https://welchgroup.co.uk) **TwentyForty:** [twentyforty.uk](https://twentyforty.uk)

#172 - Nick Hay | Holman UK#172 - Nick Hay | Holman UK

Published 24 Jun 2026

Days before stepping in as Managing Director of Holman UK, Nick Hay sits down with Paul and Sara for a conversation that ranges far wider than fleet leasing. It's a candid look at what three decades in cold chain logistics teaches you about cutting environmental impact without losing sight of commercial reality — and what it costs the person doing the leading. Nick traces a career built on incremental gains: fitting telematics across an entire 100-unit fleet back in 2005, dragging a 400-truck operation's fuel efficiency from 8.1 to over 10 MPG when people thought he was mad to try, and running Euro 5 trial vehicles from every major manufacturer side by side rather than waiting to see what everyone else did. The throughline is a willingness to test, measure, and stop what isn't working — and to do it in partnership rather than at a supplier's expense, from one of the UK's first 100% lithium-ion materials-handling fleets to joint ventures packing 40 million cases of produce a year. We get into why private ownership changes what's possible in the energy transition, how Holman's shared-risk model differs from a standard lease, and why "horses for courses" matters more than ever when logistics spans a tradesperson's van and a long-haul HGV. Nick is clear-eyed on the obstacles too: grid access, the risk of being an early adopter, reactive government policy, and the speed at which Chinese manufacturers are now moving. Then the conversation turns. Nick talks openly about growing up the self-described black sheep of an academic family, an athletics career that taught him resilience precisely because he didn't make it, and a lifelong wrestle with depression that he learned to mask at work — sometimes, he admits, at a cost to the people closest to him. It's an unusually honest exchange about what compassionate leadership actually demands: the willingness to say you don't know, to apologise when you got it wrong, and to keep believing you can be better tomorrow. His one wish? Government legislation that's properly thought through, with a long-term view instead of constant chopping and changing — the certainty the whole industry is asking for. **Guest:** Nick Hay, Managing Director, Holman UK **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-hay-4b1a52137/ **Company:** https://www.holman.com/uk/

#171 - Calum James | Farizon#171 - Calum James | Farizon

Published 17 Jun 2026

Calum James, General Manager of Farizon UK, joins Paul and Sara to talk about what it actually takes to land a brand new electric van marque in one of the world's most demanding fleet markets. Calum walks through Farizon's lineage inside the Geely group - the same family tree as Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, LEVC and the Mercedes-Benz Smart joint venture - and the role of Jameel Motors, the 80-year-old distributor putting the brand on UK roads. He explains why the SV (Super Van) and the newly launched V7e are built ground-up as EVs rather than adapted from combustion platforms, and why details like a standard ventilated seat, three-pin sockets in the load bay and a payload monitoring system are aimed squarely at fleet managers worried about driver welfare, compliance and downtime. The conversation digs into: - Farizon's "fast follower” playbook and why the SV picked up MCFT's fleet after a TCO comparison that delivered £1,500–£2,000 per van per year in savings - The AA partnership that puts mobile service, maintenance and repair on a 72-hour SLA - built around owner-operators who can't afford a day off the road - What Calum and Paul Kirby saw at the Beijing Motor Show: driverless Farizon vans on public roads, robotic 500kW chargers, and the gap between legacy OEMs that dream the future and Chinese manufacturers shipping it - The V7e's sub-£200-mile range, 1.3-tonne payload and 18-minute 80% rapid charge — and why charging speed has overtaken range anxiety as the fleet conversation - ZEV mandate pressure (10% market share against a 24% target), the shifting TCO maths as Middle East fuel volatility bites, and why 95% of electric van buyers are still fleets - Calum's path from part-time chef and Swindon banking grad to 11 years at Mercedes-Benz vans, and the leaders who shaped how he runs the team now - Regenerative leadership, the anonymous fortnightly mood meter Farizon publishes uncensored to its leadership team, and why Calum walks his dog around the same lake twice a day to stay grounded **LinkedIn:** <https://www.linkedin.com/in/calum-j-b4328059/> **Website:** https://farizonauto.co.uk

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