Getting started
Charlie Dix begins: “We collaborated with Telent on a pilot to lease a small number of our returning EVs, specifically Tesla Model 3s, on an initial 12-month contract to help improve vehicle availability and prevent Telent drivers from experiencing any delays.
“To get the project off the ground required teams from across the business to come together, and at first, the process involved multiple handovers amongst colleagues. We quickly learned that we needed dedicated resource if the pilot was going to be able to scale and so created a new, dedicated team, known as Model Office, to handle the process from beginning to end.”
Collaboration didn’t stop here, however.
Charlie, continues: “The Model Office team still works closely with others across the business, as well as our external partners, to ensure continued success. For example, they work with our customers and British Car Auctions (BCA) to source suitable returning EVs and set up the lease agreements, while our Used EV Leasing team supplies valuable insight and feedback on how we can develop our system capabilities further.
“Our Platform Feature Team has also played an important role in ensuring our systems have the capability to identify and offer suitable returning EVs to customers, removing the manual processes that had been used previously.”
Onboarding customers
Richard Porter was the first driver to take part in the pilot. He’s had a number of company cars over the last few years, experiencing promotions over time that provided him with a wider range of choice.
Richard was first made aware of the used lease option for a Tesla through a call from Gary Smith, Head of Fleet at Telent, with the financial aspects such as low Benefit-in-Kind (BIK) tax and overall cost savings of EVs playing a significant role in Richard’s decision-making process.
The option came with a discount of 10-15% compared with leasing a new car, as well as potential savings in careful selection of charging plans and energy providers. He mentions Octopus Energy as the provider he went with: “You can get paid to charge your vehicle at non-peak times”, as well as the tax benefits: “The Benefit-in-Kind tax is super low.”
Richard thoroughly praised the delivery experience and found the information shared with him to be informative and helpful, saying: “It was brilliant. Prior to the delivery I got loads of information from Lex and great support throughout the process.”