186: Peter Jones | Nineteen Group

In 2004, Andrew Lawson and host Paul Kirby drove a fully electric Mercedes-Benz Sprinter around the MIRA test track. It topped out at 40mph, had about 40 miles of range and could carry roughly a bag of crisps. Twenty years on, Andrew has been head of fleet for Mercedes-Benz UK and US director of fleet, where he helped launch Amazon's home delivery programme. He now advises Connect Vehicle Solutions, PVS, Volo and Chery Commercial Vehicles.Andrew and Paul cover: Why discounting EVs to hit ZEV mandate targets lets customers down, and why the total cost of ownership often works anyway Vehicle, charger, power, grid connection: why the whole chain has to be planned together Swapping diesel engines for batteries in working port and airport equipment instead of replacing it What dealers do when oil changes and brake pads stop paying the bills Why trust and honesty matter more as the number of suppliers chasing fleets grows Andrew's magic-wand wish: clearer messages from government, and more chances for fleets to test EVs before they commit.Connect with AndrewLinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-lawson-97570a10/Connect Vehicle Solutionshttps://pvsgroupuk.com/

Bailee Harrison buys everything from pallet trucks to cranes for The Bristol Port Company, where most of the heavy equipment still runs on diesel and the target is net zero by 2040. In Bailee's first podcast, Sarah and John Curtis ask how you decarbonise a working port.What we cover: The port's long history, from trade on the River Avon before the Romans to a 2,600-acre estate spanning three counties. The fleet: about 40 of roughly 100 vehicles are now electric or hybrid, diesel forklifts are being phased out, and electric reach stackers are on the horizon. The cost of idling: Webfleet data showed one reach stacker idling for five hours can cancel out the gains from electrifying the vehicles. The port set a 10% reduction target for idling and has reached about 35%. Data on the CEO's agenda: a monthly review of Webfleet reports that feeds down to department managers. Bailee's own story: youngest of five, nicknamed "Trouble", living with ADHD, plus advice for teenagers who want to work on the environment. Produced in partnership with Webfleet.Connect with Bailee: LinkedInThe Bristol Port Company: https://www.bristolport.co.uk

Every charging session involves a handshake drivers never see: identifying the vehicle, working out who pays and at what price, and settling the bill across roaming partners whose figures don't always agree. Björn Albertsson co-founded Metergram, a 50-person services company that works only on EV charging software for operators, eMSPs and utilities worldwide.Recorded live at Fleet & Mobility Live 2026 at the NEC in Birmingham, this conversation explains what "software-defined charging" means once a depot adds battery storage, solar, V2G and demand charges. It also looks at what happens when a fleet's charging, fleet management, transport management and monitoring systems don't work together.In this episode AutoCharge vs Plug & Charge, and what semi-public depots need Roaming reconciliation and the gaps in how OCPI gets interpreted Why V2G still lacks a mature market The risk of bolting ever more features onto one platform Björn's advice for fleet managers: plan more, and keep systems modular Björn's magic wand wish: braver policymakers. Links Björn Albertsson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjornalbertsson/ Metergram: https://metergram.com

When Nathan Gore-Brown opened Tesla's first Queensland store, EVs held 0.1% of the Australian market. Last month, plug-ins took around 35%. A former Jaguar and Aston Martin engineer, Nathan now represents AVILOO in Australia and New Zealand through TEST EV. Stefan Holzschuh, who has taken AVILOO into more than 40 markets and now runs the UK, joins at the start before a fire alarm pulls him out.Covered in this episode Why Australia is moving faster than outsiders think: rooftop solar, 500,000 home batteries in a year, and tax-free EV salary packaging How the AVILOO flash test checks battery health, cell balance and sensors in three minutes, and a car it rated 12 points healthier than the car's own reading How auction houses, dealers and pre-purchase inspectors are using battery testing to sell used EVs faster Chinese brands taking over Australian dealer forecourts Nathan's magic wand wish: get rid of the myths about EVs Nathan Gore-Brown LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-gore-brown-1403a622/ TEST EV: https://testev.co Stefan Holzschuh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanholzschuh/ AVILOO: https://aviloo.com/en/

When Gurjeet Grewal stepped up as CEO of Octopus EV, there was a three-month window to prove the point. Gurjeet set a deliberately ambitious target for March plate-change, and the business posted the biggest month in its history.Paul and JC hear how Gurjeet got there, from investment banking and leveraged finance to lean startups and then Octopus. Gurjeet credits curiosity to childhood summers with family on other continents, and grit to a mother who worked multiple jobs.They also get into the business. Octopus EV has built the UK's largest EV-only fleet, consumer leasing now makes up a quarter of monthly orders, and it's launching in Germany. Gurjeet explains why only 14% of people believe home charging beats petrol on cost, and what the industry needs to do differently.In this episode: Treating the first three months as CEO as an audition Why networking should never be transactional Consumer leasing, used EVs and getting cars to everyday drivers Helping more people of colour into senior roles A magic wand wish the show hasn't heard before Connect with Gurjeet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurjeetgrewallon/Octopus Electric Vehicles: https://octopusev.com

Peter Jones built an events business twice. Two years after launching his first show, his bank manager told him he'd built a skyscraper on a sandy beach and gave him 24 hours to liquidate. He lost the house, the car, everything - then scraped together £16,000, bought the IP back at auction, and started again.Nineteen Group is now heading for 400 people and owns the Commercial Vehicle Show, Installer and International Security Expo. And last July, in front of 120 of his own staff, Peter couldn't force a smile. He told them he was done and sat down.At Nineteen's Wimbledon HQ, Paul gets the unedited version: the hamster wheel, the storm Peter took a 45-foot boat into and had to be pulled out of by the RNLI, and the leadership rebuild that followed.Plus the EV bit - where commercial vehicle electrification is heading, why charging still has "a lot of road to go," and what it takes to bring the big truck manufacturers back to the NEC.Peter Jones (the real one, not the Dragon:)https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-jones-0b501010/Nineteen Group:https://www.nineteengroup.com

Bob Murphy was working on electric vehicles before most of the UK had anywhere to plug one in. Back in 2011, having retrained as a mechanic at Edinburgh College, he fell into a small research project that put four EVs to work as staff pool cars. Nobody knew whether they could make it from Dalkeith to Dunbar and back. There was no public charging network to fall back on. The college ended up installing its own chargers and running a five-acre solar field on site, and some of those early Mitsubishi i-MiEVs and Citroën C-Zeros are still being stripped and rebuilt by trainee technicians today.From there, Bob spent years selling and siting charge points across Scotland, which he counts as one of his proudest bits of work, and it took him to almost every corner of the country. He now works as a technical executive at Scottish Power, advising on charging networks and infrastructure, and he is a familiar face at industry events and in the WhatsApp groups where he answers questions from anyone, silly or not.Paul and John talk with Bob about: Why a lifelong petrolhead who once owned a four-litre Jaguar XJ6 and a pair of modified Ford Kas became a convert, and what a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N ring taxi lap of the Nürburgring taught him about EVs and fun The wider home energy picture: home chargers, solar, batteries and heat pumps, and why an energy company is encouraging customers to use less Hyperfocus, problem solving and the undiagnosed ADHD Bob credits for the way he goes deep on everything from i-MiEV battery cells to Star Trek lore Pressing the reset button after a career or relationship change, leaning on friends, and a 2024 spent travelling solo to a different country every month Pushing for the Scottish Power job when he felt he wasn't good enough, summed up by a Scottish phrase you'll want to remember: shy weans get nae sweeties Plockton, the west coast, and where to point the car when you need to get away Bob's wish with the EV Café magic wand: less ignorance, more empathy Along the way there is a kilt, two West Highland terriers, a shortbread tin, a tour bus full of cameras at Fort Augustus, and the podcast's most contested answer yet to Star Wars or Star Trek.Connect with Bob on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-murphy-300031b0/Find out more about Scottish Power:https://www.scottishpower.co.uk

Counting charge points tells you almost nothing. That frustration led Chris Rimmer and his colleagues at CENEX to build Are We Nearly There Yet? - reports that express public charging progress not in kilowatts or headline totals, but in years ahead or behind demand, local authority by local authority. (At recording: near-home charging sits about a year and a bit ahead. A little ahead. Not loads.)Chris has spent nearly eight years at CENEX, the not-for-profit consultancy set up in 2005 to drag zero emission vehicles out of the lab and onto the road. His particular skill is compression - turning meter points, grid flexibility and battery degradation into one sentence a politician can act on.He talks to Paul and John about the route in: physical geography and oxbow lakes, a graduate scheme at E.ON, a call centre at 24, a living lab of 75 Milton Keynes homes. A year in Mexico working for a Christian charity reset his sense of who bears the cost when the climate shifts.Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-rimmer-58468233/CENEX website: https://www.cenex.co.uk

What happens when you take an electric van that can wheelspin off the line and make it drive like the diesel it replaced? According to Kevin Hennelly, commercial director at The Vehicle Group (TVG), you get calmer drivers, fewer accidents, longer tyre life - and up to 30% more range from the same battery.Kevin lifts the lid on TVG, a "very well hidden" UK engineering company whose Aladdin's cave of products includes the Oculus camera (the only vehicle camera made in the UK) and EcoLimit, a power control system that tames EV acceleration, limits reverse speed, and can even put an overloaded van into limp mode until it's back at the depot. He talks through the real-world numbers: a refrigerated home-delivery fleet in London seeing 120–130 miles where unmodified vans manage 90, a water company getting over 200 miles per charge instead of the expected 150–160, and the knock-on savings in charging time, infrastructure, tyres, downtime, and insurance claims.Connect with Kevin: LinkedInThe Vehicle Group: thevehiclegroup.com

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.ukLex are principal sponsors of the Greenfleet EV Rally.