The government has announced a \u00a320m program to develop and provide electric and low-carbon vans to public sector organisations such as the Royal Mail and the Metropolitan police. Ten companies have been shortlisted to develop a suitable mass-market low-carbon van for the program.<\/p>\n
This money is part of a \u00a3100m program to develop the infrastructure and technology needed to make widespread use of electric and hybrid vehicles a reality.<\/p>\n
Transport secretary Geoff Hoon told the Guardian that the program was a response to the knowledge that “Van emissions are rising more than any other mode of road transport”. The government are hoping that this program will help “kick-start the market [for low-carbon vans]” as there is not currently a suitable model available.<\/p>\n
With range and recharging facilities still an issue for all-electric vehicles<\/a>, my reading of this initiative is that the main goal is self-sufficient, low-emission hybrid vehicles – perhaps along the same lines as the Chevrolet Volt, which has an all-electric powertrain but carries a small petrol engine on board to charge its batteries when needed.<\/p>\n To learn more, see this article in the Guardian<\/a> and this article on the Fleet News<\/a> website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government has announced \u00a320m of funding to support the development of low carbon emission vans for the public sector, with the hope of kick-starting the commercial market for such vehicles, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[249,469,468,470,83],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}