North East Ambulance Service introduces EV fleet

The North East Ambulance Service has replaced five of its pool cars will fully electric Nissan Leafs.

The decision to introduce electric vehicles to the Service’s fleet aims to reduce carbon emissions and fuel costs. North East Ambulance Service covers an area of 3,200 miles across County Durham, Northumberland, and Tyne and Wear, and has worked with Elm EV to build a charging infrastructure.

Nine EV charging points have been installed in six locations in the North East to support the new vehicles. These charging points are the first in the UK to be made by Dutch firm ICU, and use smartware technology to help ease the load on the national grid.

Clare Swift, Environment and Sustainability Manager, North East Ambulance Service, said: “The uptake of electric vehicles was vital for the Ambulance Service. We aim to be proactive in promoting a cleaner environment and the use of electric vehicles also enables us to save money on high fuel costs.

“Elm EV provided the service with a full EV charging infrastructure report, which included smart and reliable equipment at a competitive price.”

Alex Earl, ICU UK, Country Manager said: “Having produced over 15,000 charge points for the mainland European market, ICU is very excited to have made a start now in the UK. Our success has been built on producing high quality, reliable, intelligent charge points so it is crucial for us that we work with partners in the UK who share our values.

“Elm EV is certainly one such partner with already great experience in the UK EV market. We are very happy to be working with them and look forward to sharing continued success well into the future.”

Additionally, Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has replaced 13 of its fleet with Nissan e-NV200 electric vans. The vans were deployed after a recent trial and are expected to cut transport costs by 80 per cent, while reducing annual CO2 emissions by 59 tonnes.

Michael Taylor, who is responsible for the Trust’s fleet, said: “With increasing financial challenges on the NHS, we needed to make the service more efficient while being more environmentally friendly so decided to look at whether electric vehicles could work for us.

“We’ve been very impressed by the performance of the e-NV200 and it’s definitely helped to change perceptions of electric vehicles among our staff. Due to its success we will be looking at how we can expand its use across the trust.”