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South Wales Police is taking a “slow but steady approach” to reaching the 2030 deadline when no more petrol or diesel cars will be sold. The force has committed £10m over five years for the new fleet but like everyone else, they are looking for charging capability that meets the fleet’s needs otherwise they won’t be able to keep them on the road.
“Our overall strategy is to start slow because we haven’t got an EV infrastructure,” explains South Wales Police fleet lead Stu Parfitt. He says there are currently 20 chargers across the force area with plans to add in 30-40 more charging points from April 2025 and the same again from April 2026.
He is splitting his budget in a way that reflects the infrastructure he knows he will have by the time the vehicles arrive, which means an incremental increase in EVs to replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles across the force.
In a recent request for EV fleet plans by Emergency Services Times, South Wales Police was one of 99 services to respond, and it told us that it has an overall fleet of 870 vehicles and 75 of these are electric or hybrid. The overall spend so far totals £2.9m.
Stu says the the strategy is to buy EVs for parts of the organisation where the functions mean the vehicle can be charged over night. He says that the electric and hybrid vehicles are used for driver training, as general enquiry cars and support departments such as IT. They are also used by senior officers, his own department, the evidence management unit and by roads policing, although none of the EVs are marked at the moment.
The force is trying out lots of different EV brands: Peugeot, Kia, Tesla, Talaria, Audi, Volkswagen, Skoda, BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, Cupra and Toyota.
The telematics – data about the vehicle’s performance – are key to understanding what any of the vehicles are doing now to help plan for the future, and while Stu recognises the the value of telematics, he says that the data won’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know. He thinks the data will be helpful when there are more EVs to track and learn from, particularly how they cope with heavy loads when a vehicle is packed with important equipment.
One area that concerns Stu is fast response cars. He says that finding an EV that has a charge that lasts long enough to meet the intense demands of cars travelling at high speeds and where it has little downtime is a real challenge for the force.
Looking ahead, the plan is to buy another 300 EV / hybrids between now and 2030 and ramping up the spend starting with £1.2m in the next financial year and ending with £3.35m by March 2030.
“The concern we have is the limited market for non-EVs from about 2027. If you talk to manufacturers, they are telling us that there will be a limited number of models available as they are moving more and more to electric. We are trying to work out when to make the move to electric in different areas of our business – but much of it will be closer to 2030.”
Returning to the point about dependency on charging infrastructure, Stu says that the Welsh Government has set up an Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Programme to accelerate the roll-out of electric vehicle charging infrastructure across Wales. That is a good development and alongside that, South Wales Police is talking to other emergency services and public bodies across Wales about common issues around the EV space, sharing experience and learning as they go along.
“In terms of what we spend year by year on ICE vehicles, it’s a case of moving our spend from one vehicle type to another with some initial increase in costs but it will settle. The biggest cost of transitioning to EV fleets is the charging infrastructure. We are talking serious amounts of money here, increasing electricity supply is expensive.”
Clearly money is an issue, but alongside that there is the not inconsiderable problem of capacity of the organisations that provide access to additional electricity supply – the DNOs (distribution network operators).
It’s a problem that organisations across the UK are facing and in Wales it is no different, says Stu. “We are probably a year behind where we should be because of delays accessing infrastructure set up.” He’s looking at alternatives including solar and turbines to generate their own electricity, although that’s a challenge with UK weather.
Joining up with other blue lights or public bodies is one way to reduce waiting times for DNO services; with some clever thinking about co-locating infrastructure, South Wales Police can help to deal with some of the trickier issues that come with urban police stations not built for modern times.
He recognises there is a pace to change that’s increasing now and that innovation will continue to change the EV world. He finds this exciting but asks, “when do you take the plunge?” Indeed, but with the 2030 deadline looming that should concentrate the minds not just in South Wales but across all the emergency services.
Emergency Services Times will be publishing its first in depth insights paper on 20 March called Blue lights, electric fleets. Register for the launch webinar to find out what we learned by asking 108 emergency services what there plans are to transition their fleets by 2030.
