Facility service provider Mitie has ordered 655 Vivaro-e from Vauxhall. The first of this large order has already been handed over to Mitie, representing the 1,000th electric vehicle in the company’s fleet.
18 months ago, when Mitie made a pledge with the Climate Group initiative EV100 to decarbonise its fleet, the company thought switching its larger vans would be one of its biggest challenges, said Simon King, Director of Sustainability and Social Value at Mitie. Now, with the Vauxhall electric vans in this latest order set to join the Mitie fleet this year, the company expects to reach their target of 2,021 EVs in 2021.
For this order, Mitie chose the 75 kWh version of the electric van in two wheelbase variants (L1 and L2). The familiar 100 kW motor on the front axle is still provided by Vitesco Technologies. The range, according to the WLTP standard, is given as 330 kilometres.
In practice, however, the range is likely to be somewhat less. Since the vehicles are used by Mitie technicians and engineers, they have a special conversion in the cargo area. The equipment and tools required for the work naturally increase the weight and thus the power consumption, although Vauxhall points out that the conversion has been done to keep the weight as low as possible to maximise range.
This isn’t the first major order for the Vivaro-e in the UK. In February, Centrica ordered 2,000 additional Vivaro-e from Vauxhall for its subsidiary British Gas to make a total of 3,000 of the electric vans to be in operation by next year. In August 2020, Vauxhall announced an order from Openreach, one of the UK’s largest fleet operators, for 270 Vivaro-e and nine Corsa-e. Openreach’s parent company BT Group joined the EV100 initiative in December 2018.
Mitie joined the Climate Group’s EV100 initiative in 2019 and the EV100 annual report was released in February this year. The EV100 report reveals a continuing lack of available zero-emission commercial vehicles, but also a massive upsurge in the electrification of fleets in the UK.
