Ford Pro
Fleet EV go-to-market strategy for the UK market. Cross-functional team lead. Customer research, market segmentation, and 18-month roadmap.
Fleet EV Adoption in the UK
As part of a consulting engagement at Junewood, I led a 7-person cross-functional team working with Ford Pro on structuring their UK fleet EV go-to-market strategy.
The UK fleet market is one of the largest commercial EV opportunities in Europe. Fleet operators account for a significant share of new vehicle registrations — but EV transition rates among commercial fleets lag behind consumer adoption. Ford Pro, the commercial vehicle arm of Ford, needed to understand why — and build a credible roadmap to accelerate it.
My role: team lead. I was responsible for the research workstream, the segmentation framework, and final deliverable synthesis.
Fleet Managers Don't Convert on Sustainability.
Fleet managers don't convert on sustainability messaging. They convert on Total Cost of Ownership parity. The moment EV TCO matches or beats diesel — they move. Until then, no amount of environmental framing drives adoption.
This finding came directly from customer interviews. Fleet managers at SME and enterprise level consistently cited charging infrastructure access and TCO uncertainty as the primary blockers — not interest in EVs, not brand preference, not range anxiety.
The GTM strategy pivoted accordingly. Rather than leading with Ford's sustainability commitments or vehicle specs, the playbook was reframed around TCO calculators, charging partnership programmes, and total cost guarantees that de-risked the switch.
Research → Segmentation → Roadmap
The engagement ran in three phases:
Customer Research
30+ customer interviews across fleet sizes, sectors, and geographies. Structured around Jobs-to-be-Done and TCO decision frameworks. Synthesised into 5 high-ROI intervention hypotheses.
Market Segmentation
Defined 4 fleet operator personas across SME and enterprise. Prioritised by EV readiness score, charging infrastructure access, and TCO sensitivity. Benchmarked against 10 global mobility models.
GTM Roadmap
18-month roadmap covering pilot fleet selection, charging partnership strategy, sales enablement toolkit, and expansion triggers tied to EV adoption milestones. Aligned across operations, finance, and sustainability teams.
What We Delivered
- 4-persona fleet operator segmentation framework with EV readiness scoring
- 5 prioritised high-ROI interventions from customer research synthesis
- 18-month GTM roadmap with clear adoption milestones and expansion gates
- TCO-first messaging framework to replace sustainability-led positioning
- Charging partnership strategy for the top 3 priority fleet segments
- Executive presentation and board-ready decision document
Deliverables were presented to Ford Pro's senior leadership. The roadmap was designed to be immediately actionable — not a strategy document, but a phased execution plan with clear owners and triggers.
Projected Outcomes
The £20–25M revenue projection was derived from the 18-month roadmap's adoption model, applied to the top-priority fleet segments with conservative EV penetration assumptions.
The 25% reduction in EV transition friction (projected from the 5 identified interventions) was modelled against conversion data from comparable fleet EV programmes in Germany and the Netherlands.
What This Project Required
This was a genuinely cross-functional engagement. The skills it demanded overlap directly with product management:
- Customer discovery: 30+ structured interviews. Synthesising qualitative signals into actionable hypotheses.
- Market segmentation: Building a persona framework from raw data, not assumptions.
- Roadmapping: Translating research findings into a phased execution plan with milestones and triggers.
- Stakeholder management: Aligning operations, finance, and sustainability teams around a single strategy.
- Executive communication: Packaging complex, ambiguous findings into board-ready recommendations.
- Financial modelling: Revenue projections, TCO analysis, and adoption curve modelling.