Royal Mail aims to play its part in developing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles after announcing it will help develop a hydrogen postal van.

Once a draft design has been developed, Royal Mail intends to share it with other European postal operators prior to presenting it to manufacturers.

“We clearly see hydrogen fuel-cell technology as the future means of small and medium vehicle propulsion,” said Dr Martin Blake, the Royal Mail's head of sustainability.

“It is now just a question of seeing which one of the major motor manufacturers can bring such fuel-cell commercial vehicles to market in large numbers and reasonable prices first.”

The company has joined forces with Cenex, a Government-funded organisation charged with accelerating the development and introduction of low-carbon vehicles to the market, PostEurop, the association of European public postal operators, and FuelCellEurope, the European Association of fuel cell developers.

Royal Mail has previously said it has 28,000 vehicles that are suitable for replacement with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (Fleet News, March 26).

The problem, according Mark Cavill, project manager of Royal Mail’s carbon management project, has been the vehicles are just not available.

“As one of the country’s largest fleet operators, we are very encouraged that the Royal Mail has taken a leading role in furthering the development and wide-scale deployment of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles,” said Cenex’s chief executive officer Robert Evans.