Paul Gatti, fleet director, Royal Mail, said:
We are delighted that we can expand our fleet in London with more electric vehicles. This will allow the business to continue to deliver letters and parcels safely, efficiently and in the most environmentally-friendly way possible as we continue to shift to low emission technologies.
Sam Clarke, chair of the Institute of Couriers Electric vehicle group commented,
It's a really positive first step to see Royal Mail injecting electrification into their fleet; we now need to see this increased to the tens of thousands of electric vehicles that our European postal counterparts are already running every day on the Continent.
The initiative forms part of Royal Mail’s involvement in Optimise Prime, an EV demonstrator project led by Hitachi Vantara and UK Power Networks that tests and implements approaches to enable the roll out of EVs for commercial enterprises. Alongside Gnewt Menzies royal mail now operates one of the largest commercial EV charging points in London.
The zero-emission vehicles will deliver letters and parcels across selected locations in the capital and surrounding areas.
Charged via wall or floor mounted charging posts, the mix of Mercedes-Benz eVito and Peugeot Partner vans feature load capacities ranging from 3.7m3 to 6.3m3.
With 30 electric vehicles already in operation, the rest of the vans will roll out over the next two months. Once the new vehicles are operational, electric vans will make up a little under half of the mail centre’s total fleet of 216 small vehicles.
