London's e-van drivers club together
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Leccy Tech London’s leccy van users have locked arms in the hope of persuading the city’s petrol and diesel van drivers to support Mayor Boris Johnson's initiative to make London the world’s e-vehicle capital.
Sainsbury's already uses e-vans and plans to support the project
The plan is that all of the capital's leccy van users will share information and operational experience with one another – and with potential e-van buyers - in an effort to increase London's commercial electric van numbers.
Shipping company TNT will lead the project. The firm already has more than 100 e-vans in use across 23 UK towns and cities – apparently the single largest leccy delivery fleet in the world.
Sainsbury's has also placed an order for 50 Smith Edison e-vans, bumping the supermarket chain’s existing fleet of London-based home delivery e-vans to 62.
Others taking part in the initiative include logistics firm DHL, which already runs several electric vans, and bus company Go-Ahead, which operates a range of Smith EVs in support of its Metrobus passenger bus fleet.
While e-vans may not be the sexiest end of the EV business, it’s the sort of nuts and bolts activity that could help develop EV uptake in the immediate future and provide examples of how prospective e-van buyers can successfully operate leccy van fleets.
Tyne & Wear-based Smith Electric Vehicles - manufacturer of the Edison e-van - will, unsurprisingly, keep a close eye on the project. Why? Because Johnson’s London e-vehicle initiative also includes purchase of 1000 EVs for the Greater London Authority’s fleet. ®
COMMENTS
Now is the time
... not some distant future! As others have said, it is far easier to clean up the emissions of a power generation plant than ~30,000,000 fossil fuel burning vehicles on the UK's roads. The energy efficiency of EV over ICE vehicles is already proven, but the misinformation is now being touted about transmission losses. Thats ICE people, ICE, not EV!
We have to start somewhere and viable EV is here today, right now. There is no need to wait another ten to twenty years. Necessity being the mother of invention is already showing us new and improved battery practical storage technologies. In the lab the prospects are better still.
Power distribution is a given - its already in the ground and far more efficient than having yet more ICE powered vehicles shipping tons of liquid fossil fuel around the country - how inefficient is that!
London and these delivery companies are to be applauded for making these efforts despite all the nay-sayers. These companies will be remembered for their early commitment to helping ease the London environment.
And whatever developments are made to electricity generation will only serve to improve the benefits overall. But there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to delay the deployment of EVs into practical use.
Green?
I wish companies would stop using the "green" moniker for this initiative.
The power for the vans comes from the national grid and the national grid sources the majority of its power from.....coal.
A step towards something better, yes, Green, no.
Great idea - but can't you wait a bit longer?!
OK, yeah, creating wider urban clear zones without necessarily stiffling transport trade in a big city like London is going to be a very good thing. In fact, I'm sure electrification of transport is the way forwards, BUT NOT YET! Has any body yet checked exactly how much emissions will change should road transport go electric or how much fossil fuel will be consumed, keeping in mind how non-renewable our electricity supply system is, not to mention how inefficient the power production side is?!
I'm trying to work on that, but please can't the world hold their horses on the electrict frontier while I and other sciency people work out how it should be done? If we end up through power stations emitting more Green House Gases and burning more fuel to support electric vehicles than those vehicles do as they stand, then nobody's going to be that happy about it. Somebody tell them they need to put renewable distributed energy generation across London for this change to have all the benefits we keep assuming are already there.
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