Today, both of our articles will look predominantly at the advantages of switching your current diesel, petrol or hybrid van over to an all-electric, battery-operated commercial vehicle. We’ll take in the benefits of (part) owning such a vehicle itself and any cheap van insurance offerings that could make the deal even sweeter.
To date, manufacturers have got excited about the prospect of the green revolution they promised for UK roads; those in Westminster have been infected with this same state of euphoria. The end of 2011 saw the end of the first year that had seen any sort of yardstick slapped next to the market to measure how sales had taken off compared to initial projections.
Let’s put it this way: if electric van sales projection was the equivalent of a shuttle launch into orbit, the EV/ZE revolution in 2011 wouldn’t have cleared the Nevada desert, so disappointing were they. Renault, being the first manufacturer of electric vans to get a production line rolling, must be feeling their sphincters tighten only slightly at the prospect of their investment reaping similar rewards from EV sales as liberal democrat voters have done from being ‘in power’.
So, why have they not taken off? With sweeteners, smooth driving experience and no more freezing one’s chads off at a petrol station at 5.30am, as did Renault, one would have thought electric vans were the future of commercial transport.
We think, mayhaps, that the horse has been put a little bit before the cart, in the same way that the steam engine was invented with ne’er a mile o’ track in sight. The concept of electric vans is great, but where do you go to fill them up if you’re caught short on the road? In London (what a shock) they are rolling out more roadside plug-in top-up facilities, but any north of Watford? I’m sure Westminster think we still have a man come and put the gas lamps out in the morning and we still black-lead our fire grates, I really do.
The particulars required for a van insurance quote are pretty similar for the EV as for other types of fuel, but for reasons we’ll explain in the next article, we expect the offers to come down considerably, but only if the market takes off as manufacturers anticipate, and that BoJo wants us to believe it will.
You’ll still need to gather your typical snippets of information before you go online to look for a cheap van insurance quote, such as the van’s value, annual mileage (this is a key deciding factor, for me, why you’d go EV), your own date of birth and whether you’re taking out the van insurance privately or registering as a company vehicle. There are the standard security related questions, too: what devices, such as GPS trackers and immobilisers do you have fitted; do you have a safe overnight lock-up; what’s its postcode; they’re on the online form. Then finishing off asking if you want to ‘up’ your voluntary excess and whether you’ll be using the van for business, pleasure or a bit of both, all key determinates, vis-a-vis do you want cheap van insurance, or not?