News

EDF takes delivery of 500th EV through salary sacrifice scheme

EDF’s 500th employee has taken delivery of a new electric car through Tusker’s salary sacrifice car benefits scheme.

Since the scheme started 12 months ago, EDF has had a four per cent uptake, which includes its 500th car delivered this month. Currently around 14 additional employees are signing up to the scheme each month, 93 per cent of which are opting for a pure electric vehicle.

EDF’s staff have reported savings of around £150-£200 per month largely thanks to the one per cent Benefit in Kind available on the scheme which maximises tax and NI savings for employees, as well as charge points being available at 20 of the company’s sites. 300 additional charge points are set to be available to employees by December 2021.

Jas Sangha, Assistant Shift Manager at EDF was the 500th employee to take up an EV. He said: “I’m delighted with my new Kia e-Niro and thrilled that it was me who help hit the 500-car milestone, exactly a year on from when the first EDF Tusker car was delivered.

“My colleagues and I have been really impressed with the choice of makes and models available on the Tusker scheme, and also the cost savings. My e-Niro has an impressive 282-mile range which is more than enough for my commute. And with work offering charge points, it made switching to an electric car really easy.”

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Stellantis aims for TCO of EVs to be equivalent to ICE vehicles by 2026

Stellantis has outlined a £25 billion electrification strategy, and has set a target for electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) to account for 70 per cent of its European sales by 2030.

It also wants the total cost of ownership of EVs to be equivalent to internal combustion engine vehicles by 2026, and has a plan to secure five battery factories across Europe and North America. It also says it will reduce the cost of batteries by 60 per cent by 2030.

The company, which owns 14 brands, has also said it wants Vauxhall to be an EV-only brand by 2028.

Four platforms form the backbone of the electrified vehicles from all Stellantis brands. The platforms are said to provide a high level of flexibility, both in length and width, and component sharing. Alongside the Small, Medium and Large car platforms will be one dedicated for commercial vehicles, such as vans an pick-ups. The platforms can be paired with a family of three electric motors, offering varied configurations including front- rear- and all-wheeldrive, plus plug-in hybrid.

Battery packs will range from 37kWh up to 200kWh and offer between 300-500 miles of driving range, with the charging ability to add 20 miles per minute.

“Our electrification journey is quite possibly the most important brick to lay as we start to reveal the future of Stellantis just six months after its birth, and now the entire company is in full execution mode to exceed every customer’s expectations and accelerate our role in redefining the way the world moves,” said Carlos Tavares.

“We have the scale, the skills, the spirit and the sustainability to achieve double-digit Adjusted Operating Income margins, lead the industry with benchmark efficiencies and deliver electrified vehicles that ignite passion.”

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Andy Eastlake, Chief Executive, Zemo Partnership

A defining moment for UK transport; looking forward to Zero!

As I write this, we’re in a moment that looks set to be a defining one for UK transport. The Government has dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s (and emboldening its commitments!) on the final draft of the decarbonisation plan, which shapes how we will travel in future.

Now the plan has been revealed, we know the direction of travel (pun intended!) to zero emissions. The plan and raft of consultations and papers alongside it, show much more of the detail; an answer to the ‘how do we get there’ question.

There’s no doubt that the signals the UK (and other) Governments have been sending have already made an impact. Battery electric vehicle sales are now rising fast – BEVs were nearly 11% of the new car market last month, with PHEVs at 6.5%, electric vans at 4.2% of the growing market and electric mopeds represent 37% of that segment YTD. Encouragingly, traditional manufacturers are queueing up to announce how they will be phasing out ICE sales before very long. Vauxhall (and sister company Opel) were the latest to say they’ll offer only fully electric cars and vans in the UK from 2028.

The big – and hugely welcome – investment announcements from Nissan of an ‘Electric Vehicle Hub’ including a new battery ‘gigafactory’ in the North East and Stellantis (Vauxhall’s owner) in electric van production in Ellesmere Port add to the strong feeling that things are changing in the right direction, and fast.

Plug-in and zero emission models already dominate the sales in taxis and buses, but there’s lots more to do, of course, and transport electrification can only provide a part of the answer. Zemo Partnership’s Conference on 20 July will embrace the decarbonisation plan, focusing on these technologies and the other key parts of the puzzle. The Conference aims to demonstrate how we can ‘make it real’; what can be done here and now to take the carbon out of our travel behaviours and what this will mean for us as individuals, drivers and users, fleet managers and customers, as well as for all our organisations.

We hope – and expect – that the Conference will provide the first big opportunity for stakeholder experts to get together and share thoughts and ideas on what our transport future looks like having had sight of how the Government proposes we’re going to get there.

The afternoon parallel sessions will focus on transport electrification – of course that’s an important element of the transition - but also on decarbonising our freight and deliveries; and on how so much of this agenda will need to be managed, and driven, by authorities operating at the local level. Vital too, we’ll be looking at how sharing vehicles and recharging infrastructure can cut emissions, as well as showing how organisations can help to take the carbon out of people’s commute to work.

If everything we’ve heard and, indeed, been working on for the last few months is included, the Plan will be an exciting, weighty and seminal document, with implications for every one of us. There will be targets and roles for all aspects of the transition: fuels, technology, infrastructure, industry, data, finance, energy and behaviour…but it’s people working in partnership that will ultimately deliver success. It’s sure to be a good discussion at a vital moment in our transport history. Do join us!

FURTHER INFORMATION

See www.zemo.org.uk/conference for more details.

Nissan unveils £1bn EV Hub for carbon neutral manufacturing

Nissan has unveiled EV36Zero, a £1 billion EV Hub which brings together electric vehicles, renewable energy and battery production, setting a blueprint for the future of the automotive industry.

The project has been launched with an initial £1bn investment by Nissan and its partners Envision AESC, and Sunderland City Council. Comprised of three interconnected initiatives, Nissan EV36Zero brings together electric vehicles, renewable energy and battery production.

Building on Nissan’s historic 35 years of manufacturing excellence in Sunderland, the projects announced represent 6,200 jobs at Nissan and its UK suppliers, including more than 900 new Nissan jobs and 750 new Envision AESC jobs at its new smart, low-carbon battery plant. Longer-term, the transformational project modernises and expands Nissan’s EV production capability in the UK.

Envision AESC, the battery arm of global green tech company Envision Group, will deploy integrated AIoT smart technology to monitor and optimise energy consumption, manufacturing and maintenance at its new gigafactory, enabling it to rapidly increase production and provide batteries to power up to 100,000 Nissan electric vehicles a year.

As part of the £1 billion announcement, Nissan will invest up to £423 million to produce a new-generation allelectric vehicle in the UK.

Designed for global markets, UK production will be exported to the European markets traditionally served by Nissan’s Sunderland plant. The new crossover will be built on the Alliance CMF-EV platform, with a forecasted production capacity of up to 100,000 units to be installed.

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EV INFRASTRUCTURE

UK has less than fifth of charge points needed for net zero

New analysis from the Labour Party has found that the UK only has 15 per cent of the charging points it needs to meet net zero.

Labour has warned of a gap emerging between those who can access the benefits of the transition to electric vehicles and those who will be locked out – because of the patchy access to charging points across the country and the upfront price of vehicles.

According to the analysis, it is currently far more difficult to drive an electric car in the North and Midlands than it is in London or the South because of the serious disparity in the number of charging points. The latest official figures show you are currently four times more likely to find a charging point in London than in Yorkshire.

The Committee on Climate Change estimates that there will need to be around 150,000 public charge points operating in our country by 2025 and these should be ‘widely available across the UK’. The government is currently behind this figure at only 22,790 public charging points – meaning more than 127,000 must be installed in just the next few years.

Under their net zero plan, Labour says that it will make electric vehicle ownership affordable by offering long-term interestfree loans for new and used electric vehicles to those on low to middle incomes to remove the upfront cost barrier. The opposition party is also now pledging to make it easier for people to drive an electric vehicle, wherever they live, by accelerating the roll-out of charging points on streets and targeting areas left out like Yorkshire, the North West and the West Midlands.

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AIR QUALITY Support for Greater Manchester businesses to upgrade vehicles

Greater Manchester has secured over £120m in government funding to support local businesses upgrade to cleaner, compliant vehicles so they can travel in the Greater Manchester Clean Air Zone without incurring a daily charge.

In light of feedback following last year’s eight-week consultation on the plans and the impact of COVID-19, particularly on small businesses, GM-registered taxi/private hire owners and LGV owners will be given more time, money and options to upgrade.

This includes temporary exemptions for an additional year (until 31 May 2023) for all hackney and private hire vehicles (PHV) licensed by a GM District. Vans, minibuses, GM-registered coaches and wheelchair-accessible taxis were already exempt from daily charges until 2023.

Following consultation and protracted negotiations with government, GM has increased funding support per vehicle for HGVs, coaches, vans, GM Hackney cabs and PHVs. Vans can now access up to £4.5k towards the replacement of a vehicle – £1k more than initially proposed – and GM Hackney Cabs can get up to £10k. HGVs can now get up to £12k towards replacement, nearly three times more than was initially offered, and coaches are now eligible for £32k.

Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said: “We listened hard to what business owners wanted and, as a result, taxi drivers are being given more time, more funding and more options. This is part of our wider commitment to put GMlicensed hackney and private hire drivers first, and to lobby government to give us the powers to ensure that only locally licensed drivers are able to operate here.”

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