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Smith Edison provides ten vans for colognE-mobil project |
Project to look at how electric commercial vehicles could impact German plans for 1 million zero emission vehicles by 2020.
Smith Electric Vehicles is providing ten Edison vans to Ford of Europe for the colognE-mobil project to shape Germany’s low carbon future.
The first phase of the project will examine the potential benefits of electric commercial vehicles in Cologne, then forecast how they could impact on the Federal Government's National Development Plan for Electric Mobility, which aims to get 1 million electric vehicles on German roads by 2020.
The initiative will research the impact of electric vans and cars on urban air quality, traffic safety and electricity supply infrastructure. Scientists will then scale up the results to examine the true benefits an electric future could deliver for Cologne.
The Smith Edison is a pure electric version of the Ford Transit van, powered by leading edge lithium-ion batteries and delivers a range of up to 100 miles on a full charge and a top speed of 50mph.
For this project, Smith will build seven Edison panel vans for delivery service companies, two Edison minibuses for passenger shuttle services and one Edison chassis cab for municipal use in the City of Cologne.
Ford of Europe will deliver the final vehicles to all these clients and is responsible for their technical maintenance and service during the project and will also deploy a number of Ford Focus BEV electric passenger cars later in the project.
Ford is a partners in the colognE-mobil project, along with RheinEnergie AG, the City of Cologne and the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Kevin Harkin, Sales Director for Smith Electric Vehicles, said: "We believe that commercial electric vehicles have a major role to play in low carbon transport and are confident this research project will reach the same conclusions."
Further information:
Smith Edison |
