On-street charging specialist char.gy has tied up with Allstar, the fuel and corporate payments arm of NYSE-listed Corpay, to open its residential kerbside network to UK business drivers paying with the Allstar card. The arrangement, announced this week, folds char.gy’s roughly 5,000 lamp-post and bollard-mounted chargers into a payment system already used by some 1.2 million cardholders across 50,000 British and Irish businesses.
Corporate fleets lead EV uptake as costs near half
The deal addresses a familiar gap in fleet electrification. Many fleet drivers take their vehicles home overnight, but a significant share have no driveway and no means of installing a private wallbox. With no nearby alternatives, the default is rapid DC charging at unit costs high enough to undermine the operating economics of going electric in the first place. The issue weighs particularly on self-employed and owner-operator drivers, who carry their own energy costs and rely on affordable local options to keep margins intact.
Slower overnight AC charging at the kerbside, billed through the same card used for petrol and diesel, offers a workable alternative. char.gy's network is concentrated on residential streets aimed precisely at drivers without home charging, while Allstar's platform consolidates fuel and EV payments into a single account and bill.
"As fleets electrify, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring drivers can access reliable, convenient charging where they live," said John Lewis, chief executive of char.gy. Tom Rowlands, managing director of global EV solutions at Corpay, described the partnership as a way of "combining fuel and EV payments into one seamless solution, while giving drivers greater confidence that they can charge easily and cost-effectively throughout their working day."
UK – EV share hits record 22.7% in March
The shortfall in residential kerbside charging is not a uniquely British problem. Across European cities, municipalities are pushing fleet operators to electrify well ahead of the public charging rollout, and the gap between depot-based provision and where drivers actually park overnight has emerged as one of the more stubborn constraints on commercial EV uptake. Allstar's existing EV network covers more than 36,000 locations and 88,000 connectors through partnerships with over 60 operators; the addition of char.gy's estate is intended to plug the specific urban-residential layer that has so far proved hardest to fill. (TF)
