French Post Office to Order 10,000 Electric Vehicles
17 April 2007
The French post office—La Poste—announced on Monday that it will order 10,000 electric delivery vehicles over the next five years. This week it will invite bids to supply the first 500, for delivery in 2008.
La Poste has been testing eight CLEANOVA electric vehicles since 2005. (Earlier post.) Thirty of the vehicles were delivered to 7 customers: La Poste, EDF, Veolia, the Accor group, ALD Automotive, and the towns of Saint-Etienne and Monaco.
This (+ the 10 000 for UAE) is good news for utility BEVs. The British Postal Services is apparently looking for similar vehicles for the same time frame. If Postal Services of the 50+ industrial countries would do the same, this could turn into a 500 000+ application = something close to mass production utility BEVs. UPS, FedEx, HDL and other complementary mail services would be potential customers.
Wonder which battery pack will be proposed/used?
Another good EV application would be Electric (AWD) city buses, (without overhead cables but with enough on-board, very quick charge supercaps/batteries, for 1Km to 2Km only). These buses would (automatically) get the energy required at selected regular corner stop charge stations. A small on board generator would supply electricity for emergencies only. With enough corner stop charge stations, these buses could progressively replace all current diesel units to reduce city air and noise pollution + GHG.
Posted by: Harvey D. | 17 April 2007 at 07:06 AM
USPS placed an order for Ford ranger based BEV cars, and they tested them. The reports are online. They then evaporated. Does anyone know what happened?
I think Ballard made the drive system although they said were labelled Siemans.
US had small jeep style cars back in 1970's too.
The electric motors for the project have been on sale in surplus for quite some time.
I would appreciate a posting if you know.
Posted by: joe padula | 17 April 2007 at 07:47 AM
Harvey do you have any links to info on the UK post office going for BEVs?
This is great news. Good on the French for supporting their domestic industry with their Grands Projets!
Posted by: scatter | 17 April 2007 at 07:54 AM
cleanova have gone very quiet, I suspect they are trying to find
a way of not producing these cars, given that the vehicle used
for their BEV is from Renault which has close ties with the french
oil industry.
Also heard from the geneva show that they were considering
using the Fiat doblo for half of the production, which considering
how nationalistic the french are would be an unusual choice, and
maybe would indicate some problems with Renault not wanting to
cough up the engineless cars. Cleanova were also being very elusive
at the Geneva show back in march about pricing , and suggesting that they
may not even sell the battery along with the vehicle, choosing to
lease it instead, which may also be a way to tax the vehicle for
road use.
The battery is a 40kwh lithium developed by Johnson/Saft, or
was in march anyway .
I really hope this project gets going , but I am sure that the Motor
industry over here in europe is just as scared of the re-emergance
of the electric car as the American companies are, and I fear that
they will fight through hell and high water to keep them off the
streets!
Posted by: andrichrose | 17 April 2007 at 03:02 PM
The way I understand it,the Cleanova is simply the system rather than the vehicle. I believe it can be used in a wide variety of vehicle types so whoever pays to licence the technology will be able to incorporate it into the production line. Maybe a third party might be able to purchase gliders and install it themselves?
Now how about the Cleanova system in the Loremo...?
Posted by: scatter | 18 April 2007 at 01:47 AM
So, I can guess Europa will experience some difficulties with electricity soon... I mean that changing a system is not very easy.
http://all-translations.com/services/french-translation.html
Posted by: French Translator | 01 October 2007 at 05:00 AM