The Types Of Electric Commercial Vehicle Already In Use

A huge amount of the traffic on our streets is commercial. This makes the eradication of fossil fuel powered commercial vehicles extremely important for both the environment and the health of people living in cities. Here are some examples of electric commercial vehicles currently in production.

Milk Floats

Although the milk trucks doing the rounds in American cities are powered by gasoline, the ‘milk floats’ used in England have been electricity powered since 1889. Milk floats are a great example of how electric vehicles can be used in a financially sustainable way to deliver a product.

HGVs

Electric heavy goods vehicles were deemed an impossibility until recently. There is, however, a steady stream of innovative new heavy EV designs being released into the market that seem set to change the course of trucking history. Long distance car and motorbike transport from companies such as https://www.shiply.com/vehicle-delivery/cheap-motorcycle-transport.php, container delivery and refrigerated trucking loads may soon be hauled by electric trucks producing huge amounts of power. Electric motors have one distinct performance advantage over diesel engines when it comes to trucking: torque. Electric motors are far more torquey than their gas guzzling counterparts, which means that future trucks will be able to do away with the complex gearboxes that are needed to get today’s vehicles up hills. In theory, this could compensate for some of the high prices associated with the latest batteries.

Delivery Vans

We are not yet at the point where diesel powered fleets of delivery vans are fading away – but there are signs of the electrification revolution that is to come. Companies with vast logistical budgets like Amazon have invested heavily in the electrification of their delivery fleets. Although electrification currently only makes sense for companies with a great deal of money to invest, the more uptake there is the more affordable future systems will be. Amazon recently collaborated with EV startup Rivian to produce the first fleet of electric delivery vans. If there is one thing you can count on it is that Amazon will try and squeeze every penny it can out of the collaboration, so expect the vans to be offered up to smaller companies in the future.

Motorbikes And Scooters

Take a walk around any major European or North American city and you’ll notice a rather startling new trend if you pay attention: two wheeled electric courier and delivery bikes. Battery powered vehicles are perfectly suited to this role. Light motorbikes are already very efficient due to their low weight, which means that relatively cheap batteries can be used to power them. City deliveries are also usually completed after a very short journey, so operatives rarely have to worry about running out of juice during a job. Because the batteries that power electric two wheeled vehicles are so small, they can be charged using conventional mains chargers and do not require scarce high voltage charging points like larger zero emissions vehicles. In some cities, this electrification has created a stark change in audible atmosphere. No longer are the streets of Paris buzzing with the sound of two stroke engines powering Vespas or Honda C90 type bikes.