Electric vans
Few people know that electric vans are nothing new - post was being delivered in electric vans over 100 years ago, and whilst the ‘smog’ of the late 1800’s has gone there are still a lot of reasons to look at electrifying your vans, from financial to environmental to convenience - but you do need to be careful.
While we would argue that pretty much all of us can make the move to electric cars today, with vans it really depends on the usage.
Costs
Electric vans tend to be a little more expensive than their diesel counterparts to buy or lease, but that’s only part of the picture. While initial outlay is high, the running costs can be tiny. Electric motors have few moving parts, maintenance patterns are generally more spread out and costs a lot lower. Crucially your biggest cost, fuel, is slashed when you charge at work, however please be aware charging publicly will be double the cost of charging at home and in some cases can cost a little more than diesel if you do not take out a charge card account to secure discounts. The biggest savings can come from areas where clean air zones are in place, of course this list is growing all the time!
Range
Range wise some electric vans can do 200 miles between charges, however this is significantly impacted by load. Heavy loads can impact range by 20%, lots of motorway driving at high speed has a similar impact. However city driving will push this range up over 200, range is dictated by battery size, for every 10kw of battery you’ll get around 30 miles but will also add 40kg of weight. You’ll also need to factor in charge stops for longer trips and while these are simple and effective to do, it’s 40 minutes rather than ten at the motorway.
Conclusions
We estimate 80% of van operators would save time and money going electric in addition to boosting your environmental credentials. Of course, if you have perfectly good diesel or petrol vans then unless you are impacted by clean air zones use them, until they need replacing and then make the switch! But when replacement cycles are due, contact one of our experts for our simple profiler to learn what electric could do for you.
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