Sainsbury Goes Electric

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Sunday April 20, 2008 - Sainsbury Goes Electric - British grocery chain Sainsbury has found a new old way to fight global warming.  They have started conversion of their delivery fleet to electric.  I say new old way because electric vehicles have been used for almost a century to deliver milk in Britain.

J Sainsbury PLC was founded in 1869 when John James and Mary Ann Sainsbury opened a small dairy shop in Drury Lane, London.  The company has grown over the years from that first tiny shop to become one of the largest food retailers in the UK.  The company has also become a leader in environmental issues by introducing things like compostable packing materials and recycling programs for carrier bags.

In 1985 they started field testing their "Little Green Van" electric delivery trucks.  These trucks, built by Smith Electric Vehicles, have proved so effective that they have ordered more and will have 20% of their fleet electric by the end of September.  They plan to convert the entire fleet by 2010.  

The electric vans, which are currently charged off the grid, are responsible for about 0.20Kg of CO₂ per kilometer, considerably less than the 0.36Kg of CO₂ produced by the diesel trucks they replaced.  Each van placed in service will save about 5 metric tons of CO₂ per year.  In addition, each of these vans will replace about 780.000 drives to the store, although this will not have much impact as the trips would be displaced anyway even if the delivery was by diesel truck.

The Vans are equipped with a GPS navigation system that allows the driver to plot the most efficient route for his deliveries saving time and energy.  To save even more green house gas emissions Sainsbury plans to eventually charge the vehicles from renewable sources such as wind or solar bringing the amount of emissions down to near zero.

Delivery operations are a good application for electric vehicles since many of these vehicles don't drive more than about 30 miles per day although some routes can take the vehicle up to about 100 miles per day which is possible with newer battery technology.  Smith for example offer a variety of electric delivery vans with ranges up to 150 miles and payloads in excess of 15000 lbs.  These vehicles are ideally suited to local deliveries in large urban areas.

I would like to see more electric vehicles being used for such delivery missions.  For example the post office uses thousands of delivery vans to get the mail to your mailbox.  Their average route in large cities is something like 22 miles and payloads are well within the capabilities of an electric van.  The US postal service did attempt a pilot project a few years ago but a poor design. mating the standard Grumman body to a Ford Ranger EV chassis powered by lead acid batteries didn't give the vehicle enough range, so the project was dropped like a hot potato.  The French government on the other hand did a successful trial with a van based on the Citroen Berlingo using a lithium battery pack, and are now looking to find a supplier who can supply several thousand EVs.

Using Electric vehicles doesn't always make sense but in many cases it does.  We need to cut our carbon footprint and the use of electric delivery vehicles is one way to help.  I hope that companies with delivery operations see the success that Sainsbury is having and start to emulate them.  The good news is that Smith Electric Vehicles is beginning to expand into the US with a range of electric vehicles that should be well suited to many delivery fleets.  

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