BSH Home Appliances is the New Zealand subsidiary of Europe’s leading manufacturer of premium home appliances.
They import three premium brands including Bosch, Gaggenau and Neff, showcased through their own local showroom brand, UnserHaus and through their retail distributors nationwide.
The global manufacturing business is carbon neutral and BSH New Zealand are similarly committed to sustainability. Their vehicle fleet – leased through FleetPartners – is central to their business, for both nationwide sales and delivery of product.
BSH Home Appliances wanted to start transitioning their fleet to electric vehicles. They had sustainability goals to meet and BSH NZ Director, Darryl Robinson, says the change they wanted to make was reflective of the company’s values:
“Part of the mantra of BSH is to be a sustainable company and when we had the chance to renew our lease vehicles, we took the opportunity to look at where we were going and what we wanted to do.”
The transition wasn’t without its challenges around people, place and process – the finance department would have to be convinced and staff had some anxiety around the range of the vehicles and the new technologies. But the whole of life cost analysis comparing the fuel vehicles to electric backed up the decision:
“We did what any company would do. We looked at what we had and what we paid, then we looked at the opportunity for savings if we moved the fleet totally to EV and made the decision predicated on that.”
FleetPartners helped BSH make this transition quite early on in New Zealand’s EV adoption, at a time when EVs were in short supply. The team arranged for staff to have a hands-on experience with an electric vehicle.
“One of the cool things we managed to do with FleetPartners’ help was to get Tesla to give us a Model 3 for a week. Pretty much everyone in Auckland drove the car, whether they were going to get a company car or not. Everyone wanted to try it,” said Darryl.
“Now everyone who needs a car in the BSH sales team has one. We also arranged driver training for all staff around charging, along with the installation of two chargers in each of our three locations and provided several home chargers for employees.”
After some time measuring the return on investment for the EV fleet, Darryl has found that the numbers are even better than expected:
“When we created the spreadsheet, it was all theoretical, but the reality has been much better. In the first five months, not only have we saved many tonnes of CO2, we’ve saved over $15,000 in fuel costs. So, from that point of view, it’s been a real win.”
The BSH team also found that range anxiety and concerns around EV technology didn’t take long to get over. Everybody that needs a charger at home has one. They know there is a public charger every 50-75km in New Zealand, and the BSH team got training from experts on using the technology.
