{"id":38,"date":"2007-11-30T15:06:09","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T14:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/38"},"modified":"2008-03-27T10:54:07","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T09:54:07","slug":"electric-vans-hit-the-roads-in-our-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/38","title":{"rendered":"Electric Vans Hit The Roads In Our Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent months have seen a number of UK companies putting all-electric vans and 7.5t trucks into operation on urban duties.\"Ford<\/p>\n

The most popular choice at present seems to be the Smith Electric Vehicles <\/a>Edison <\/a>– a Ford Transit converted to all-electric operation. The Edison provides an impressive 150 miles range and maintains a 1,500kg payload with a gross vehicle weight of under 3.5t – making it exempt from the London Congestion Charge.<\/p>\n

The Edison has a restricted top speed of 50mph – presumably to avoid the batteries being drained too quickly by excessive speed – which should be more than adequate for any urban deliveries.<\/p>\n

Customers so far include A Plant<\/a> – a London-based plant hire firm, as well as household names like Sainsbury Online, TNT Express and Scottish & Southern Energy<\/a>, who is adding the Edison to its 6,000 strong commercial vehicle fleet.<\/p>\n

An alternative electric-powered option has also been produced by UK company Modec<\/a>, who have developed an all-new electric van design providing a payload of up to 2,000kg. The Modec van has already been adopted by equipment hire firm Speedy Hire for London use<\/a> – and it seems certain that other companies with intensive urban operations will follow suit.<\/p>\n

I can’t see many of these all-electric vans making their way into rental fleets; their limited range and speed mean that they are only really suitable for dedicated urban use at present. However, the rapidly-growing popularity of electric power just goes to support the case for hybrid power <\/a>– surely the best of both worlds?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent months have seen a number of UK companies putting all-electric vans and 7.5t trucks into operation on urban duties.<\/p>\n

The most popular choice at present seems to be the Smith Electric Vehicles Edison – a Ford Transit converted to all-electric operation. The Edison provides an impressive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"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=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}