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DPD has ordered 300 electric vans for use in the UK. Nissan is to deliver its e-NV200 by May 2020. DPD is thus expanding its electric fleet in the UK to 450 vehicles and aims to reach the 500 e-vehicle mark by the end of 2020.
By then ten per cent of the van fleet in the 68 DPD depots in the UK will be battery-electric. The delivery service has already been using some of Nissan’s electric vehicles for the past 18 months. DPD says that feedback from the drivers has been extremely positive so far. The company has also developed in-house training as part of a comprehensive vehicle handover programme to help drivers adapt to electric vehicles.
The e-NV200‘s cargo space is 4.2 cubic metres, and the WLTP range is between 200 and 300 kilometres. On a CHAdeMO fast charger, the battery can be charged to 80 per cent in about 60 minutes, and overnight (8 hours to be exact) the battery can also be charged via an AC wall box.
Notably, electric delivery vans do not replace existing diesel-powered transporters 1:1. “These vehicles are changing the way we work,” says DPD CEO Dwain McDonald. “We are rethinking and re-engineering how we deliver parcels now and in the future with different route networks and new types of depots.”
McDonald also thanked Nissan in the corresponding press release for the fact that the car manufacturer had “made affordable righthand drive vehicles available in significant numbers, but we can take far more if other manufacturers do the same,” said the DPD boss.
In London, Royal Mail recently added 87 electric vans to its fleets, made up of a combination of Mercedes eVito and Peugeot Partner Electric. The Peugeot, in this case, is somewhat smaller than the Nissan (3.7 cubic metres of cargo space). The larger Mercedes (6.3 cubic metres) can currently only be charged using alternating current meaning that quick, intermediate charging on longer routes is not possible.
The DPD Westminster depot the delivery service already converted its fleet exclusively to electric vehicles in October 2018. Twelve select vehicles will also be used there: DPD is one of the first customers of the EAV P1, a four-wheeled cargo pedelec from the English startup EAV.
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