Ford test gives greenlight to EVs for business use
Green car news – by Ann Elise Taylor
12th July 2011
Findings from a Ford study released today provided promising news for businesses interested in switching to purely electric commercial vehicle fleets, after real-world testing confirmed their reliability in urban settings.
ColognE-mobil, a joint venture made up of
Ford Motor Company, the city of Cologne, RheinEnergie AG and the University of Duisburg-Essen, carried out rigorous assessment of 10
Ford Transit BEVs and 10
Ford Transit Connect Electrics for the trial. Through testing functions such as carrying cargo and making deliveries on normal urban
roads, it was shown that the vehicles are well-suited for businesses’ day-to-day activities, are eco-friendly and are not hindered by distances between charge points in city settings.
"The cologne-mobil project provides essential data and important feedback from fleet customers on our electric vehicles," Roland Krüger, Ford of Europe Project manager for colognE-mobil, said. "While the results are overwhelmingly positive so far, they are still invaluable in helping us and our project partners to enhance ongoing development of e-mobility solutions."
EV trials
ColognE-mobil has been evaluating the fleet of Ford vehicles since April 2010. So far the vehicles, which are being put to the test by fleet customers in the delivery and service sector, have traveled 50,000 kilometres (km) in total, racking up a total of 1,500 charges.
The trials have demonstrated that commercial electric vehicles are able to carry out a wide range of functions, can be charged without issue and emit 90 per cent less CO2 compared to traditional commercial vehicles.
One issue addressed by the project was that of 'range anxiety,’ which was thought to be an unfounded concern in typical urban usage of the vehicles after testing. According to a release from colognE-mobil, the average distance between two charging processes during testing was 30 km and customers participating in the trial drove between 25 km and 70 km per day.
As the maximum ranges for the two Ford vehicles are over 130 km, they could be charged at participating companies’ work yards or a public charging station at the Cologne city centre without difficulty, ColognE-mobil said.
After its successful launch in North America, the emission-free Transit Connect light is now available in European markets, the release said. The commercial EVs will be sold by Azure Dynamics through a specially-created network of dealerships.
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