Taking the first steps towards electrification at Fleet & Mobility Live

By Tom Seymour

15 September 2022

Islington Council and Nottingham City Council will offer advice to fleets on how to take the first steps towards electrification as part of a special session at Fleet & Mobility Live.

The EV Theatre features a varied range of seminar sessions aimed at sharing some of the challenges and opportunities fleets have discovered so far when switching vehicles to zero emissions.

The purpose of this particular session is to offer insight to those fleets that might be earlier on in their journey, with both Chris Demetriou, Islington Council head of corporate fleet, transport & accessible community transport and Matt Ralfe, Nottingham City Council innovation and change manager for parking, fleet and transport operations available to help with advice.

Registration for Fleet & Mobility Live is open now and is free to all fleet decision makers.

Both Demetriou and Ralfe will set out how they started with electric vehicles (EV) and the unique challenges they have faced with their electric fleet strategy.

Demetriou said: “We’ll go back and look at our first EV, which was actually over 20 years ago but then look at where we are with our strategy now.”

Islington has been building up its electric fleet to 80 vehicles and this includes commercial vehicles from sweepers and dust carts, to vans and cars too.

He said: “We’ve still got 420 vehicles to go and our intention is to switch to zero emissions for all of them.

“At the moment that’s EV but we’re also looking at hydrogen for the future too. We’re also looking at other options for last mile delivery as part of the electrification strategy too.”

Nottingham has gone from two EVs in 2016, before adding six Nissan e-NV200 vans and has since grown the electric fleet to 241, with 51% of the fleet converted to zero emissions so far.

The council is already over half way on its electrification journey, but Ralfe said it’s not as simple as setting out a 100% electric fleet strategy from the start.

He said: “Everyone wants a 100% fleet strategy, but why would I say today what my fleet will look like in 10 years? It's particularly challenging to have a view that far out with some of the fleet cycles I have on heavier commercial vehicles.”

Ralfe will share his thoughts on where the quick wins are with adding EVs and will also look at how Nottingham is creating a shared public sector charging network across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.