Electric vehicle trials

1 July 2021

It’s all happening in Coventry. Not only did its year as the UK City of Culture kick off in May, but it’s also running a two-year project to provide electric vehicles for local organisations to trial.

Run by Coventry City Council with funding support from Highways England, Electric Fleet First encourages businesses to switch to battery powered vans, pool cars and taxis to reduce emissions

Vehicles are offered on a ‘try before you buy’ basis of a minimum two-month period, with the only cost being insurance cover during the trial period, the council states. 

Built-in telematics at the end of the test programme generate a usage report outlining the benefits achieved.

A pilot project was trialled by Leeds City Council last year and similar schemes are being developed in Nottingham, Sheffield and Bristol. 

These sound like worthy initiatives. A Government press release extolling the Coventry scheme’s merits quotes a local driving instructor who has found it “hugely beneficial”. 

He said: “There was one instance where I recall picking [the vehicle] up and I was worried it would run out of charge before I got home, but I popped to the supermarket to use one of the charge points, grabbed a coffee and when I came back to the car it had gained 30 miles of range which was easily enough to get me back home.” 

However, I can’t help thinking that, if the Government is serious about the wider adoption of electric vehicles, this sort of scheme should be rolled out nationwide rather than on a piecemeal local basis. 

Indeed, judging by the level of interest from tool and plant hire professionals in the blog stories that I’ve posted earlier about the real-life experiences of driving electric cars, there’s a real thirst for knowledge about them. 

Photo: Mike/Pexels