The car-leasing company driving the move to electric vehicles

Greener vehicle requirements weren’t being met by traditional showrooms, so Fiona Howarth decided to create her own company and hold EV events. She talks to Martin Friel

Howarth: ‘We found that people were really interested in change but didn’t know how to start’

Our mission is to help people to transition to EVs and make that as easy as possible. But many things have made that challenging,” says Fiona Howarth, chief executive of Octopus Electric Vehicles.

Overcoming those challenges is going to be key if the government is to meet its ambitious target to be a zero contributor to global greenhouse gases emissions by 2050. Transport produces around a third of the country’s CO2 emissions with the majority of that coming from road transport so EVs, and companies such as Howarth’s seem to have an important role to play.

Launched in 2017 by green energy provider Octopus Energy, Octopus EV is taking a two-pronged approach to tackling the transport-generated CO2 problem. Essentially it is a traditional car-leasing company but focused entirely on EVs and powering them with green energy.