Two British automakers are betting big that they can transform the look of last-mile delivery in the U.K. away from cargo bikes and bigger vans.
As the Guardian reports, manufacturers Prodrive and Astheimer Design plan to sell 10,000 one-person electric delivery vehicles by 2023 at a retail price of £25,000.
Their joint venture, ELM Mobility, sees an opportunity for an EV that can split the difference between less efficient, unreliable vans and much smaller bikes.
The prototype of these EVs, named EVOLV, is technically designated as a heavy quadricycle and not a van, due to its lightweight and smaller frame.
EVOLV's striking design weighs in at under 600 kilograms (1,323 pounds), excluding its battery weight, to meet the classification. The design can be loaded by a single person, and ELM believes it will be capable of carrying a standard palette of goods. As the company describes, the unique architecture "shrink wraps the driver package" to maximize load space.
"If you can get a full-height pallet on a [quadricycle], it's a game changer," Prodrive chief executive and ELM co-leader Iain Roche told the Guardian. Roche also said the customer base is "highly dissatisfied" with the current offerings for last-mile delivery including Chinese-made vehicles.
Last-mile delivery is the final stage of the delivery process, during which the local warehouse or fulfillment center reaches the customer with the goods. ELM says contemporary vehicles are "falling short in terms of reliability, safety, driver comfort and payload volume, or are simply too large and costly for the task in hand."
ELM will be hoping to avoid the recent high-profile failures of U.K. vehicle manufacturers like Arrival, Volta Trucks, and Tevva. Still, the potential for this quadricycle is exciting to think about, and it's worth noting the vehicle is attacking a much smaller niche than those predecessors.
According to ELM's official site, the EVOLV vehicles will be "half the weight of a compact van with equivalent load volume." That light weight also results in industry-leading cost and energy per unit volume of goods per mile, per brand calculations.
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The vehicles are fully electric, which means a sharp reduction in air and noise pollution, as well as lowering the reliance on fossil fuels' dirty energy.
As far as when you can expect to see these head-turning vehicles on the road, the company announced it aims to put the EVOLV into production in the U.K. in 2028. The Guardian notes that the brand is also envisioning European expansion if things go well in the U.K.
For readers in the U.S. looking to tap into the benefits of EVs for themselves, now is a great time, as you can tap into $7,500 in tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act.
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