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#182 - Chris Chandler | Lex Autolease#182 - Chris Chandler | Lex Autolease

Published 02 Sep 2026

Chris Chandler is Principal Consultant at Lex Autolease and the electrification SME across all three Lloyds Banking Group motor brands: Lex Autolease on the B2B side, Tusker in salary sacrifice (22,000 vehicles at acquisition, 100,000 the week we recorded), and Black Horse in retail finance. Between leasing and salary sacrifice, that's a serious chunk of the EVs on British roads. Paul and JC get into: - Why cars sprinted and vans crawled - benefit-in-kind versus a purely transactional purchase, and why commercial vehicles are far less price elastic than company cars - The moment the tax went up and "the tap just turned off" - then came back down and switched on again - Why converted diesel platforms were never going to cut it, and what changes when a van is engineered electric from the ground up - Charging that should just work: plug in, it charges, no apps, no cards, no accounts - V2G, home solar and batteries, and why a leasing company is now asking customers what's behind the wall socket - Designing CO2-based company car tax in 1999, and why CO2 beat the other 18 candidates on the list - Biodiesel, waxing fuel, bacterial growth, and the argument for a 5% blend across everything rather than 67% in a handful of refuse trucks **Chris Chandler on LinkedIn:** <https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-chandler-756b9813/> **Lex Autolease:** <https://www.lexautolease.co.uk> Lex are principal sponsors of the Greenfleet EV Rally.

#181 - Angela Muresan | Be.EV#181 - Angela Muresan | Be.EV

Published 26 Aug 2026

Angela Muresan arrived in the UK in 2015 with broken English and a job picking and packing in a warehouse. Ten years later she's a presenter, content creator, and the face of Be.EV — and the story of how she got there involves a notebook full of borrowed email templates, a self-funded industry event that left her with £20 in the bank, and a one-way ticket taken purely because an ex once said the UK was the one place he'd never go. Angela talks about ADHD — what it cost her before she understood it, why she now calls it a superpower, and how an unlikely combination of therapy and ChatGPT helped her make sense of her own brain. She explains the gamble behind Race to Zero, the event she organised alone with no marketing experience specifically so the industry would come to her (it worked), and why her proudest achievement has nothing to do with work. Along the way: why she refuses to be boxed in as "an EV person" or "a petrol person", the sameness problem with modern car design, her plan to convert a classic — ideally a '69 Shelby Mustang — to electric, and what she'd do with a EuroMillions win. And when handed the EV Café magic wand, her one wish isn't about chargers or range. It's about ending the tribalism — petrol versus electric, us versus them — and just getting on with building a cleaner future together. ## Connect with Angela: - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingwithangela/ - Website: https://www.angelamuresan.com - Be.EV: https://www.be-ev.co.uk

#180 - Warren Philips | EVA England#180 - Warren Philips | EVA England

Published 19 Aug 2026

A co-founder of EVA England, incoming chair of the Recharge APPG in Parliament, and one of the earliest UK adopters of home solar, battery storage and electric driving — Warren Phlips received one of the very first consumer Tesla Powerwall 2 units in the country (number three, he's told, just behind a certain Robert Llewellyn) — he has spent the best part of a decade quietly pulling the EV transition in the right direction, almost entirely as a volunteer. But this conversation goes far beyond charge points and policy. Warren talks candidly about the moment that changed everything: sitting alone in a hospital room, holding his newborn daughter while doctors fought to save his wife, and deciding then and there that his job was to make the world better rather than build a fortress around his family. Everything since — the advocacy, the lobbying, the 20-plus hours a week given freely to EVA England — flows from that decision, and from a promise his daughter. Along the way: - From avionics engineering and FTSE 100 software to government security work — and how none of it explains the hats - How showing off a Renault Zoe and some solar panels at an eco open home quietly converted a neighbourhood - The five principles Warren tests every policy against: fair, accessible, equitable, safe, accurate - A live debate on the newly announced VAT cut on domestic electricity — good news, but is it fair to the millions who can't charge at home? - Recognising privilege, and choosing to spend it on other people - Lucid Destiny, his new consultancy helping companies navigate the EV transition without losing sight of the consumer at the end of it - Why his daughter is named after Ayrton Senna - And a Magic Wand wish that might be the best one yet: removing fear itself **Connect with Warren:**[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrenphilips/) **EVA England:**[evaengland.org.uk](https://www.evaengland.org.uk)

#179 - Alun Davies | ElectrAssure#179 - Alun Davies | ElectrAssure

Published 12 Aug 2026

Alun Davies once told his team that electric vehicle charging "would never catch on" — and sent someone else to do the first installation jobs. Today he leads ElectrAssure, the electrical contractor behind nearly 2,000 charging sockets for National Grid, the chargers that greet every electric Volkswagen arriving on UK shores, and some of the first DC rapid chargers for Western Power Distribution. This week, Alun sits down with Paul and John to trace the line from qualified electrician to business leader — and it's anything but a straight one. Along the way: a theatre degree, a stint as sound engineer for the England football team's press conferences (and Girls Aloud), a summer spent on commercial roofs, and a cherry picker licence that landed him an apprenticeship in the family firm. Alun talks candidly about the roundtable moment six years ago when nerves nearly got the better of him — and how a "nuts and bolts" perspective turned out to be exactly what a room full of fleet managers needed to hear. He opens up about running a business with his wife (a former deputy head teacher, now Ops Director), why they've agreed never to switch off from work, giving up alcohol in 2022 to think more clearly, and measuring success by the energy in a room rather than the numbers on a spreadsheet. There's also a school report that shattered a 20-year self-image, a son whose GCSE English presentation was titled "Why Electric Vehicles Are Rubbish", and the revelation that this softly-spoken sparky is the lead singer of a heavy metal band, Before the Sirens. Whether you're wiring up a depot, scaling a family business, or just wondering how a self-confessed class clown ends up advising National Grid, this one's worth your fifty minutes. ## Connect with Alun and ElectrAssure ### Alun on LinkedIn [linkedin.com/in/alun-davies-electrassure](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alun-davies-electrassure/) ### ElectrAssure [electrassure.co.uk](https://www.electrassure.co.uk) ### Before the Sirens [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@beforethesirensofficial) [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/artist/3JLOw2Ua3Sidpo0kXFZCE) [Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/before-the-sirens/1464198406)

#178 - Andrew Clint | myenergi#178 - Andrew Clint | myenergi

Published 05 Aug 2026

What does it take to steer a £50 million business towards its founder's vision of lasting 100 years? Andrew Clint, CEO of myenergi, joins us fresh from the company's 10th anniversary celebrations to talk about the next 90. Eighteen months into the role, Andrew explains why myenergi — best known for zappi, the first solar-aware EV charger — is refocusing on Lee Sutton's original ambition: a complete home energy management system. That means vehicle-to-grid on the horizon, the libbi home battery, Grid Pay rewarding customers for grid flexibility, and software that quietly optimises solar, battery and EV charging without the homeowner lifting a finger. His maths is compelling: a full ecosystem could save households around £1,500 a year — close to a zero-bills home. Andrew is candid about why so many charging companies have come and gone while myenergi endures: knowing exactly what you are, and what you aren't. He also digs into how AI is accelerating the business, from a new data lake on AWS to machine learning that learns a household's habits. Andrew also discusses walking away from British Airways after missing out on a job, growing a De La Rue division from £30m to £90m, and the mother whose question — "is that really the best you can do?" — still drives him today. ## Connect with Andrew: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewclint/) ## Find out more about myenergi: [myenergi.com](https://www.myenergi.com)

#177 - Dan McLaren | BP Pulse#177 - Dan McLaren | BP Pulse

Published 29 Jul 2026

Dan McLaren left school with no qualifications, spent his early years as a greenkeeper at a private members' golf club, and now looks after half of the BP Pulse network as Network Optimisation Lead. Dan talks about growing up dyslexic in a school system that dealt with it by "putting you in a class with less people", and about the father-in-law who took him on as a project — daily five o'clock phone calls, hard questions, and a £600-a-month leg-up that let him start again from the bottom in the motor trade. It's a powerful case for why everyone should find themselves a mentor, and why Dan now makes time to be one for the younger generation coming up behind him. We also cover: - **Falling into EV by accident** — how a fixed-term contract at the Electric Vehicle Experience Centre in Milton Keynes (taken mainly because it came with a car) turned into a career, once Dan swapped a cautious rental policy for a simple philosophy: bums on seats sells EVs. - **Life as "Dan Dan the EV Man"** — taking on the myths and misinformation head-on via TikTok, why he actually quite enjoyed the naysayers, and why he stepped back from it to make a bigger difference from a commercial seat. - **Where BP Pulse goes next** — the shift to purely rapid and ultra-fast charging, why it's about the right charger in the right place rather than the most chargers in the ground, partnerships with M&S, Q-Park and Transport for London, and an honest reflection on the reputational baggage that comes with being one of the industry's earliest movers. - **Playing to your strengths** — how Dan turned dyslexia into an engine for ideas, relationships and front-of-room energy, and learned to let the analytical people do the analytical bits. Plus, Dan receives the legendary EV Café magic wand and uses his wishes on happy kids, a healthier heart, and making BP Pulse the biggest and best charge point operator in the UK. ## Connect with Dan - LinkedIn: [Dan McLaren](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-mclaren-7913019b/) - BP Pulse: [bppulse.com](https://www.bppulse.com/en-gb) - TikTok: [Dan Dan the EV Man](https://www.tiktok.com/@dandantheevman)

#176 - Will Rowe | Octopus Energy#176 - Will Rowe | Octopus Energy

Published 22 Jul 2026

What do you get when you cross the world's most innovative energy company with the world's largest battery maker? Swaptopus — a joint venture between Octopus Energy and CATL that's bringing HGV battery swapping to the UK and Europe. And the man growing it is Will Rowe, Entrepreneur in Residence at Octopus Energy, who joins us this week from a tennis club, the day after selling his house. Commitment. Will explains why battery swapping cracks the three problems that have stalled electric trucking: grid connections, charging downtime, and the mismatch between when trucks need power and when power is cheap. Swap a battery in minutes, keep the truck earning, and let the swapped-out batteries do a second job — because a network of stations full of batteries is also a virtual power plant, storing cheap renewable energy and feeding it back when the grid needs it. This isn't just a transport play; it's an energy infrastructure play. He's refreshingly blunt about the road that led here, too. Will previously founded a hydrogen business for exactly this market — and he tells us candidly why it didn't work, why losing two-thirds of your energy is no route to energy security, and what China's thousand-to-one preference for batteries over hydrogen tells us about where this is all heading. His verdict on hydrogen for transport is one you'll want to hear in full. Along the way we get into: - **Why trucks are the easy win** — 32 TWh of new annual electricity demand if the UK's trucks go electric, lowering bills for everyone, while governments obsess over data centres instead - **Autonomy changing everything** — a customer planning to go from 60 to 160 hours of weekly truck utilisation, and what cab-free, 24/7 freight means for an industry whose two biggest costs are labour and fuel - **Bringing Chinese OEMs to Europe** — and conversations underway with four of the five biggest European truck makers - **Geography-specific energy strategies** — why a swap station in solar-rich Spain looks nothing like one in windy Britain - **Growing up dyslexic with a reading age of six**, passing A-levels anyway, and why resilience — and a mum who insisted he could do anything — mattered more than school ever did - **Honest talk about failure** — why it hurts, what it teaches, and why loving the problem matters more than loving your first solution And when handed the EV Café Magic Wand, Will's wish is deliberately unglamorous and absolutely fundamental: **just make electricity cheaper.** Get that right, he argues, and the business case for electrifying everything falls into place on its own. --- **Connect with Will:** [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-rowe-55ab9816/) **Octopus Energy:** [octopus.energy](https://octopus.energy/)

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

Published 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>

#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