I don’t imagine that 2020 will be reflected upon with any great deal of affection by SMEs around Scotland or any other level of enterprise or organisation for that matter.

EVi Charge Points went into 2020 with a good order book and contracts on the horizon to fill. The announcement from Boris Johnston on the 23rd March that the country would move into lockdown was not entirely unexpected but certainly threw a spanner in the works.

Whilst we were unable to fulfil our obligations to our customers at homes and businesses to install their Electric Vehicle Charge Points, and furloughing the majority of staff, we chose to view it as an opportunity to review and improve our processes.

Physical site surveys, a main stay of our service at EVi moved to the Zoom platform where we were able to speak with our customers directly, discuss their requirements and provide Zoom to Zoom advice on the array of EV charge points now on the market. This ensured the order book was maintained for our return to operations.

Training was provided to bring new charge points to our portfolio and to provide continuous professional development for the team and a refresh and update on our subject matter expertise on our current charge points. This allowed the team to take an otherwise unavailable gap in the installation programme and keep them involved with the company.

Utilising cloud based contracts and signatures reduced our requirement for paper based documentation and improved our time management across the board.

Unfortunately, our planned move into the Solar PV installation industry due in April was postponed due to the cancellation of NICEIC approved courses and this moved to August on the first available course delivery. With support provided by Business Gateway, we were able to have the team trained during August and are now in the process of MCS registration.

With the announcement every 3 weeks by the Government and also tying in with the Scottish Government direction, communication with our customers was vital in maintaining our pipeline and we only lost one customer during this period. Our sincerest thanks go out to our customers who were exceedingly appreciative of the situation and stayed the course to support local business. Unfortunately, during this time we were made aware that the National companies and those in England specifically were flouting the rules and still carrying out work within Scotland.

The growth in the Electric Vehicle market over the past year has seen a 184% increase in the sales of EVs from Sep 2019 to Sep 2020 and a 38% and 21% decrease in Diesel and Petrol sales respectively. The announcement by the Government of the 10-point plan to include the move to 2030 for the cessation of new sales of Petrol and Diesel vehicles has shown a clear intent to move to the net-zero emissions target of 2050.

The result of the past year has certainly been one of uncertainty. We have noted that there is now genuine interest in home and commercial renewables, no doubt due to how we are now operating in the majority from home. With the installation of Solar PV, Battery Storage and running electric vehicles as well as additional renewable energies, we hope to see a greener and invigorated 2021.

Green and Easy, charge with EVi.