{"id":9569,"date":"2017-01-23T15:46:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T15:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=9569"},"modified":"2017-01-23T15:46:45","modified_gmt":"2017-01-23T15:46:45","slug":"ford-launches-plugin-hybrid-electric-van-van-trial-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/9569","title":{"rendered":"Ford launches plugin hybrid electric van van trial in London"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a typical weekday in London, commercial vehicles make 280,000 journeys, covering a total distance of 18 million miles.\u00a075% of the\u00a0freight vehicles involved in these movements are vans, covering an average of\u00a064 miles per day.<\/p>\n

These are staggering\u00a0figures, especially when you consider that the vast majority of the\u00a0vans\u00a0and trucks involved are diesel vehicles. Urban pollution from diesel is\u00a0already a major public health issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0the Euro 6 emissions standard promises to achieve\u00a0a reduction where Euro 5 failed<\/a>,\u00a0diesel-fuelled air pollution is still a concern, as is the noise pollution caused by all these rattly diesel engines — still far louder and more raucous than petrol equivalents.<\/p>\n

In an effort to improve the situation and prepare the ground for\u00a0a\u00a0large-scale move into\u00a0the electric\u00a0vehicle market, Ford has\u00a0partnered with Transport for London to launch a 12-month trial of 20 plugin hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) Transit Custom vans.<\/p>\n

\"Ford

One of the 20 new Ford Transit Custom PHEV due to go start a 12-month trial in London later in 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ford will provide 20 PHEV Transits to a range of commercial fleets across London, including Transport for London\u2019s fleet, to explore how such vans can contribute to cleaner air targets while boosting productivity for operators in urban conditions. The project is supported financially by the government-funded Advanced Propulsion Centre.<\/p>\n

These vans are forerunners of the Transit Custom PHEV production model that’s scheduled for commercial production in 2019. Ford is the first company to offer PHEV functionality in the van sector.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a>

How the Ford Transit plugin hybrid electric vans will be used in and around London (click to enlarge)<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea is that the vans can be charged from the mains and will run solely on electric power for the majority of the time they’re operating in\u00a0Central London.\u00a0They will however retain the ability to cover longer distances without recharging\u00a0using their\u00a0standard engines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe freight sector\u2019s transition to ultra-low emission vehicles is central to cleaning up London\u2019s toxic air,\u201d said Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London. \u201cTransport for London continues to lead by example by increasing the number of its own vehicles that are electric and will find the data from these trials an invaluable resource for the LoCITY<\/a> programme, which encourages the uptake of low emission commercial transport.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ford is planning to launch 13 electric vehicles globally in the next five years. The Transit Custom PHEV is one of these. In my view, the operating case for electric vans in cities has already\u00a0been made several<\/a> times<\/a> over<\/a>. It remains a mystery to me why — for example — large postal operators in other<\/a> European<\/a> countries<\/a> are buying thousands of electric delivery vehicles, while\u00a0Royal Mail\u00a0chooses only\u00a0bicycles and diesel vans.<\/p>\n

Hopefully London Mayor Khan will be a more forceful and effective advocate of electric vans than his predecessor. It’s high time that London and the UK started to lead the way in modernising Europe’s\u00a0transport\u00a0infrastructure and vehicle parc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ford has partnered with Transport for London to run a 12-month trial of 20 Transit Custom PHEV vans in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[1688,658,2051],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9569"}],"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=9569"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9577,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9569\/revisions\/9577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}