New All Electric Vans for the Royal Mail

Published Date: 30th Aug 2017

Nine full electric vans are currently being used in a new trial, all the vans have a range of up to 100 miles.

The vans come in a range of different sizes with a 3.5 tonne version pictured and larger HGV versions all being used to distribute mail throughout the city of London.

The New All Electric Royal Mail Van

The futuristic post vans are all developed and built in Britain by Arrival, an automotive tech firm formally known as Charge Automotive. They’re based in Oxfordshire with a new factory in Banbury producing these prototypes for the Royal Mail to test.

Arrival also produces electric motors and other supplies for the Roboracer, another futuristic development in motorsport featuring driverless race cars.

Peugeot are also involved in the new look, low emission mail deliveries, they’ve just took a 100 van order from the Royal Mail. The Peugeot Partner electric van is capable of 80-90 miles from a full charge and can charge from 0 to 80 percent in just 30 minutes and also features zero emissions.

Having the already tested the Peugeot vans, they felt confident to place an order that will see them entering service in December this year.

Royal Mail Fleet's managing director Paul Gatti is said to be “delighted” with the new collaboration with Arrival.

"We will be putting them through their paces over the next several months to see how they cope with the mail collection demands from our larger sites," he added.

The current Royal Mail fleet has 49,000 vehicles and most of them running on diesel, with the new London Ultra Low Emission Zone coming into force in 2019 they’re looking to avoid extra costs being applied to larger vehicles that will be charged £100 per day.

The new emission zone runs within the existing congestion charge area but the Government have already planned to extend this further in 2020 to increase inner city air quality.