A waste management company is set to convert two of its fleet of collection vehicles in Bristol from diesel to electric in a £600,000 investment.
Grundon Waste Management will make the move within the next few months after trials to gauge the vehicles’ range found they were capable of operating a full day on one charge.
The commitment is part of the family-owned firm’s annual £5m investment programme to improve its road-going vehicles and efforts to reduce its carbon emissions.
The e-One refuse collection vehicle was able to cover more than 150km during one of its trial days with Grundon, which the company’s director Bradley Smith said had “exceeded our expectations”.
Mr Smith said: ““Having proved that the vehicle is more than capable of operating a full day on just one charge, we have every confidence that, as we retrofit this clean technology onto two of our own vehicles, local residents and customers will see the increased benefits of our zero emission and zero noise collections.”
Read More Related Articles We’ve launched our new Climate Agenda newsletter and we’d love you to join us Read More Related Articles Saietta to scale electric motor production with help of Somerset engineering firmThe e-One vehicle is a joint initiative between truck dealer Refuse Vehicles Solutions and EMOSS, a Dutch manufacturer that specialises in parts for heavy electric vehicles.
The retro-fitting will make Oxfordshire-based Grundon, which has two locations in Bristol and one in Cheltenham, the latest business in the West Country to add all-electric vehicles to its operations.
Wiltshire-based waste management firm MJ Church added a zero emission truck to its collection fleet in order to be compliant with the clean air zone introduced in Bath in March, and a similar scheme planned for Bristol from summer 2022.
Royal Mail launched its first all-electric delivery office in Easton in Bristol, replacing 23 diesel vans with electric models in May, while organic veg box company Riverford also chose the city to roll out its first fleet of fully electric vehicles in April.
In 2018 Grundon launched a low emission hydrogen diesel dual-fuel waste collection vehicle. Its entire waste collection fleet has been certified as carbon neutral since 2014.
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