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BMW, Toyota, Bosch, Repsol trial 100% renewable petrolPlus 14 more moves UK fleets need this week - BIK, RVs, compliance and supply · 15 stories · 21 Jul 2026 | |||||||||||||
THRIVE is independent fleet intelligence, direct to your inbox. Each Tuesday we read the UK fleet market at the source and send you the developments that actually change a fleet decision - every claim linked to where it came from. A short read. | |||||||||||||
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BMW, Toyota, Bosch and Repsol have started a six-month pilot in Spain, from July 2026, running roughly 20 Toyota, Lexus and BMW vehicles exclusively on Repsol's Nexa 95, a fuel the company markets as "100% renewable gasoline" (Repsol's own term) made from RED-compliant feedstocks. For UK fleets sweating existing petrol assets ahead of the 2030/2035 ICE phase-out dates, that matters because a drop-in renewable petrol needs no new vehicles, no new pumps and no retraining - Repsol and its partners are pitching it as a clean decarbonisation route for the parc that's already on the road, though that claim still has to survive contact with supply, pricing and scale. (BMW Group) The cars in question are unmodified production Toyota and Lexus models supplied by Toyota España, alongside BMW Group fleet vehicles, all running on existing engines and existing filling-station infrastructure. Bosch's contribution is the measurement layer: a "Digital Fuel Twin" that cross-checks vehicle telemetry against station records and fuel card transactions to verify what actually went in the tank, which is the detail that turns a marketing claim into an auditable one. Dr Marko Babic, who heads the Digital Fuel Twin product area at Bosch, is overseeing that side; Dr Stefan Heller leads BMW's VEEF development programme, and Estíbaliz Pombo is Repsol's deputy director of energy products. (BMW Group; Toyota Motor Europe) The catch, and it is a significant one, is supply. Repsol is currently the only provider selling 100% renewable petrol at public forecourts in Spain, and there is no indication yet of volumes, pricing or any route to UK pumps. This is a manufacturer-and-refiner proof point, not a launch. It sidesteps the residual-value uncertainty that still dogs EVs and the infrastructure gaps that undermine hydrogen, and it offers a plausible bridge for high-mileage petrol fleets that can't yet justify a full electric switch - assuming the economics and supply chain ever stack up. But "if" is doing a lot of work: one refiner, one country, twenty cars, six months. That is a pilot, not a policy. The Bosch verification layer is arguably the more transferable piece here. A trusted, auditable way to confirm what fuel actually went into a vehicle - reconciled against telemetry and card data - is exactly the kind of infrastructure that would need to exist before any renewable-fuel claim could be used for BIK, carbon reporting or Scope 1 disclosure purposes. Get that verification standard wrong, or leave it proprietary to one refiner, and renewable fuel accounting becomes as contested as biofuel blending claims have been for years. Nothing here changes an AFR, a BIK band or a CAZ exemption today. But fleet decision-makers with significant petrol exposure, particularly those without a credible EV transition plan yet, should treat this pilot as a marker to watch rather than a headline to shrug off. Worth asking your fuel and vehicle suppliers whether renewable petrol is on their roadmap for UK volumes, and on what timeline. | |||||||||||||
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Flock launches Jay, an AI risk analyst for its fleet insurance customers | |||||||||||||
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Connected fleet insurer Flock has launched Jay, an agentic AI tool inside the Flock Portal that answers fleet managers' plain-English questions about their own vehicles, claims, connected miles and safety scores, and sends daily alerts on emerging risks. Flock says Jay was trained on 1 billion km of driving data and is available to every Flock customer and to every broker placing business with it, and that 87% of the 23 fleets in its pilot came back for more help. Whether it changes how you manage risk in practice is worth checking with your broker. (Flock [https://flockcover.com/news/flock-launches-jay-the-uks-first-ai-expert-for-every-fleet-customerLytx) | |||||||||||||
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Treasury confirms April 2028 eVED launch despite refund concerns | |||||||||||||
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The government has confirmed it's pressing ahead with eVED, the pay-per-mile EV levy due in April 2028, and EVA England has responded with an open letter asking the Chancellor to pause and rethink it. The detail fleets should worry about isn't the principle of road pricing, it's the mechanics: the letter says 70% of the more than 2,400 EV drivers whose evidence EVA England submitted were worried about paying upfront on estimated mileage with no proper refund regime, and argues that nearly 40% of households still lack access to affordable charging. Fleets running EVs on estimated-mileage billing should press for clarity on refunds now, rather than wait for the scheme design to firm up closer to 2028. (EVA England) | |||||||||||||
eVED confirmed: pure electric cars face 3p-per-mile charge from April 2028 | |||||||||||||
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eVED is now confirmed, not speculated: from April 2028, pure electric cars pay 3p a mile, plug-in hybrids 1.5p, following a consultation that drew over 5,000 responses and saw the mooted extra mileage checks on cars under three years old dropped, per The Electric Car Scheme. At a standard 10,000-mile allowance that works out to roughly £300 a year - a bill EV drivers simply have not had to budget for until now. The mechanics of how it interacts with BIK rates and fuel duty comparisons still need working through properly. Update TCO models for 2028 once the detail firms up. | |||||||||||||
EV salary sacrifice typically saves 20-50% versus a personal lease, provider says | |||||||||||||
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The World Cup tie-in is marketing froth, but the underlying number is the one to bank: BiK on these EVs is 4% for 2026/27, and salary sacrifice typically undercuts a personal lease by 20 to 50%, according to The Electric Car Scheme, which also lists more than 200 EVs available through the scheme. That gap is what makes sacrifice schemes worth defending in benefits reviews, not the novelty of a Kia EV9 or Volvo EX90 on the drive. With that many models on offer, the harder job is picking ones that suit real driver needs rather than showroom appeal - range and seating count for more than badge kudos once the tax saving is banked. THRIVE's company car BiK rates table sets out the appropriate percentages year by year. | |||||||||||||
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Hived charges electric HGVs overnight at LEAP24's London hub | |||||||||||||
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All-electric parcel firm Hived is overnighting its heavy goods vehicles at LEAP24's London City Airport hub, where extra-wide bays take trucks up to 12 metres and charging tops out at 300kW. LEAP24 says it's expanding across London and the South East. Worth watching if you're scoping electric HGV routes anywhere near the M25. | |||||||||||||
Volvo invests £24m in automated Coventry parts hub | |||||||||||||
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Volvo Group is putting £24 million into a 91,000 sq. ft distribution centre in Coventry, replacing the current Rugby parts operation and, notably, installing the first automated storage system of its kind in a Volvo Group warehouse in Europe. It covers Volvo Trucks, Volvo Buses, Renault Trucks and Volvo Penta. Site access is planned for early 2027, with full operation expected in the second half of that year, which means today's parts service stays as-is for now. (Volvo) | |||||||||||||
Five minutes with… Richard Owens, Group Marketing Manager, Don-Bur | |||||||||||||
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More pallets per run without adding a truck: Don-Bur's new 15.65m tri-axle Longer Semi-Trailer carries 52 UK pallets and 136.24m³, per SMMT's interview with Group Marketing Manager Richard Owens. Don-Bur says lifting deck LSTs with a full-length upper deck can take up to 60 UK pallets; this one is instead configured with an open loading area above the swan-neck and its EcoStream aerodynamic roof for the fuel side of the equation. For operators fighting driver shortages and yard congestion, that's fewer trailer movements per contract. | |||||||||||||
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Stagecoach opens depot chargers to commercial fleets at six sites | |||||||||||||
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Stagecoach is opening up its depot charging network to other operators under the "Chargd" brand. Six sites are live - Cambridge, Oxford, Inverness, Stockton, Ash Grove and Dover - with nine more confirmed for later in 2026, stretching from Aberdeen and Kilmarnock down to Bromley and Rugby, per Stagecoach. That is a bus operator repurposing its own charging infrastructure as a B2B offer. Fleets weighing up-front charging investment versus third-party contracts now have another supplier to factor in. | |||||||||||||
Banbury Superhub’s 32 chargers now deliver up to 160kW | |||||||||||||
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Worth building into route planning if 55p-a-kWh off-peak charging for InstaVolt app users, 8pm to 7am, factors into your cost modelling. factors into your cost modelling. (InstaVolt) | |||||||||||||
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Half-year targets push UK pre-reg volumes up 10.8%, says Brego | |||||||||||||
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UK pre-reg volumes rose 10.8% in June compared with May, according to Brego's June Car Market Insight report [https://brego.io/market-updates], which says dealers were being pushed by manufacturers to meet half-year targets and earn volume bonuses, adding near-new metal to the used market at a discount. That matters for residuals: more of these registrations mean more "nearly new" cars competing with your fleet's disposals a few months down the line. For context on pricing pressure, Cox Automotive's US data shows average used-vehicle listings topping $27,000 for the first time since 2023, even as supply crept up - a US market read only, with no direct bearing on UK RVs yet. Worth watching whether similar dynamics show up in UK data. (Cox Automotive) | |||||||||||||
REA urges new PM to act on grid connection delays | |||||||||||||
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The REA's call for a plan to cut grid connection delays is the bit fleet operators should care about in its First 100 Days briefing. It argues CfDs and grid upgrades are essential to delivering electrification at scale, and also pushes Local Area Energy Plans and energy market reform as routes to a fairer, cheaper transition. None of it is binding, but it's a decent signal of where grid-connection queues and charging costs are headed. | |||||||||||||
EV salary sacrifice: who can join without breaching minimum wage | |||||||||||||
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Salary sacrifice EV schemes live or die on eligibility rules, and the edge cases need checking rather than guessing. Loveelectric's new guidance tackles the awkward ones: minimum earnings thresholds against national minimum wage, and whether zero-hours or variable-pay staff can join at all - a question that trips up plenty of schemes built around a standard nine-to-five payroll model (Loveelectric). Get this wrong and you either exclude lower earners who, loveelectric argues, can benefit most from the bundled package, or breach minimum wage rules by sacrificing someone below the floor. Worth a policy review before your next scheme renewal, particularly if your workforce includes shift or casual workers. | |||||||||||||
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UK pump prices: petrol 150.5p, diesel 164.5p per litre | |||||||||||||
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52.95p a litre - that's the fuel duty rate baked into both petrol and diesel, stacked with 20% VAT on top of every fill-up, per DESNZ. That combination is arguably why pump-price swings never fully pass through to relief at the forecourt: duty holds firm whatever crude does, and VAT stays at 20% on top. For fleets chasing Advisory Fuel Rate accuracy, that fixed floor is worth remembering when a week-on-week wobble looks bigger than it is. | |||||||||||||
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Enfield Council opens market engagement on £1m HRA EV charging project | |||||||||||||
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London Borough of Enfield has opened preliminary market engagement for its HRA EV charging project, a soft-launch stage worth watching for operators managing mixed depot and on-street charging. There is no detailed scope yet, though the notice estimates the value at £1m (£1.2m including VAT) for a contract planned to run from October 2026 to September 2027, and early engagement is where access, tariffs and reliability standards get defined before the formal tender locks them in. Worth tracking how this one shapes up. (Find a Tender) | |||||||||||||
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