Drive Electric plug-in fleet day targets corporate fleets

Drive Electric, formerly known as APEV (the association for the promotion of electric vehicles) held a plug-in fleet day in Auckland yesterday to encourage large and corporate fleet buyers to consider placing fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on their shopping list in the next three years.

People attending the fleet day had the opportunity to drive a fully electric Nissan Leaf and BMW i3 as well as a plug-in hybrid Audi A3 e-tron, and the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV electric vehicle.

The chairman of Drive Electric Mark Gilbert says while electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are not the answer to all fleet issues, the issue of range for many is not an issue.

Keynote speaker City of Sydney manager of strategy and assets Chris Binns told the assembled guests that he was impressed by New Zealand having a renewable power generation figure of 80% rather than the coal fired power that is available in Australia.

He outlined the pool vehicle strategy which has been employed by the City of Sydney since 2009 to reduce its carbon emissions and also showed how the municipality had placed solar panels on it’s buildings to generate power to offset the power used to charge the vehicles overnight.

Binns says in the five years that the City of Sydney has been using electric vehicles such as the Mitsubishi i-Miev and the Nissan Leaf as pool cars for staff to use during the working day, not one had been damaged, unlike other vehicles which were often damaged in parking buildings.

Read more from the event in AutoTalk magazine next week.