Cadent van fleet begins entire  upgrade to electric

The upgrade of the Cadent van fleet began in spring 2022, which will be fundamental in supporting our net zero plans and wider environmental and sustainability strategies.

We’ve committed to the regulator and stakeholders to deliver a greener fleet, with the initial steps being to move to an EV FCO fleet within this regulatory period.
 
Alongside helping us reach our net zero ambitions, the project is helping us deliver our safety, compliance, wellbeing and customer service ambitions. We are working with several key suppliers in the fleet industry around vehicle acquisition, conversion, maintenance, branding and future tech to ensure our fleet is at the forefront of what the market can provide. It’s also a chance to see what other opportunities we might have to support our operational teams and tackle the environmental challenges we’re facing.
 
Upgrading our whole entire fleet
 
We intend to replace our entire FCO fleet with EV over the next few years. We’ll replace around 2,500 commercial vehicles, and around 950 will be EVs. Today, we have 55 EV FCO vans in our networks, with phase one deployment reaching around 360 by the end of the year and work on phase two already underway.
 
We’re ensuring our employees have home charging points where possible and all the support they need around understanding where existing public charging infrastructure is located. Furthermore, to help support employees in the roll out, we have a trial of a new EV where they can arrange to test drive and we are also running a series of fleet roadshows at depots across our network.  
  
Sander Smith of TSG – Supply Chain, commented: “We engaged with FCO engineers to understand their day-to-day challenges and designed a fit-out that resolved many of these challenges. The conversion is highly sustainable, the floor and linking kit are constructed from 100% recycled materials while the racking is manufactured in a part solar-powered factory, too.”