- UK postal service, Royal Mail, has announced the addition of the first electric trucks to join its logistics fleet.
- The trial is happening in conjunction with UK-based electric drive systems supplier, Magtec.
- Operating on a trial basis, for now, the first electric truck will be based at Royal Mail’s Greenford Mail Centre in London, helping to transport mail to other nearby delivery offices.
Royal Mail ups its EV ambitions with new electric trucks
Under the electric truck’s specification, up to 125 miles will be capable on a single charge, with the rear fully-loaded, making it perfectly suited for urban logistics operations in large cities such as London.
From the trial, which has been supported by an £800,000 grant from Innovate UK, Royal Mail hopes to understand the practicalities of a more widespread switch to electric trucks within its fleet, with a scope to increase electric truck numbers if the trial is successful. These future electric trucks would join an increasingly large number of smaller electric vans that Royal Mail operates, with the number of those smaller vans set to exceed 7,000 vehicles by July this year.
Anna Pearson, Fleet Innovation and Environment Manager at Royal Mail, commented:
“We’re excited to welcome the Magtec truck to the Royal Mail fleet. We’ve been rolling out electric vans in our ‘final mile’ fleet for a number of years, and now we want to learn more about how we can decarbonise our national distribution fleet of over 4,000 trucks. This trial will help strengthen our position as the UK’s largest electric delivery fleet operator, while ensuring we have the reliability we need for the challenge of delivering to every single one of the UK’s 32 million addresses.”
Martin Welch, Senior Project Delivery Lead at the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK, added:
“Magtec’s high-performance electric drive train technology is now excellently positioned to seize a growth market opportunity. As demand for electric vehicles increases both for first-build and re-power applications, so does the need for versatile and effective powertrain systems like those offered by Magtec.
APC is delighted to see the results of its collaborative R&D projects delivering products to the automotive sector at scale. Making these systems efficient and affordable is essential to enable decarbonisation of the range of commercial vehicles currently in use, while still delivering customer priorities like drivability, range, and efficiency.”
Overall, this move forms part of Royal Mail’s wider strategy to achieve net zero operations by 2040. It’s not the only delivery firm in the UK to be making big moves within the EV sector. DPD, for example, recently began eHGV trials in the UK to form part of its delivery chain, whilst electric-only delivery firms such as HIVED already exist.
