Morris Vermaport has replaced its fleet of vans with a fleet of Toyota Prius hybrids.
Its home-based service engineers had previously used non-Toyota crew-vans.
But when one engineer started working on a contract in London last October, Morris Vermaport’s operations director Andy Waddell suggested that he use a Prius to save on congestion charging.
Official combined fuel-consumption figure for the Toyota Prius is 72mpg, with carbon emissions from 89g/km.
“Fuel is a massive factor for us - we have been spending up to £13,000 a month on the vans,” says Waddell.
“The Prius in real terms works out about £100 a month more to hire than the vans - but then, we’re getting twice the miles per gallon.”
The resulting positive feedback helped to persuade the management that hybrid cars were the way forward.
“We’re always looking at ways of doing things more efficiently and with less impact environmentally," says Waddell.
“We also want to be seen by our customers to be green on the road.
“So when we set out our latest three-year plan, with environmental care as one of our core values, we decided to go with Prius at the same time.”
The first six sign-written Prius five-door hatchbacks were delivered in late June.
They were supplied on a four-year/80,000 mile contract-hire agreement by JCT600 through Ron Brooks Mansfield.
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Busterrabbit - 27/09/2016 11:08
The green sentiment is all very well, but is the Prius really a suitable replacement for a van? Vans are designed to operate continuously close to their GVW, cars are not. Many fleets have migrated from vans to estate cars and experienced issues with either being overweight (especially rear axle weight) or running close to GVW all the time. The rear suspension of most estate cars is designed to provide a car-like ride and NOT designed to cope with running fully loaded every day. EVs, hybrids and PHEVs have their place but must be matched to their intended use. There are many thousands of Outlander PHEVs on UK roads, almost all chosen because of their low CO2 and allegedly green credentials, and most are doing less than 25mpg up and down the motorways every day. How green is that? In many cases, particularly the public sector, going green is a tick-box exercise to make a superficially positive statement, but the reality is often quite different.