Europa Road has taken delivery of its first electric truck from commercial vehicle contract hire business Vertellus.

The Renault Trucks E-Tech 18-tonne vehicle has been deployed at Europa Road’s £30 million hub in Dartford as part of Vertellus’ three-month EV Discovery Programme.

The trial will see Europa Road use its first electric vehicle to travel between the company’s expanding network of local branches, as well as gain valuable insight into making its future fleets more sustainable.

Operations director at Europa Worldwide Group, Dan Cook, said: “It’s been highlighted by the World Economic Forum that shipment transportation accounts for 24% of net carbon emissions and it has therefore been a long-held ambition of Europa’s to adopt technologies that will help reduce our carbon emissions.

“Europa Road’s participation in Vertellus’ EV Discovery Programme marks the start of our transition to becoming a more sustainable logistics operator.”

He continued: “The ‘try-before-you-buy’ programme gives us an opportunity to explore the strengths and limits of this technology, identifying where it can be most useful to us and will also provide us with knowledge on how we can adopt similar technologies into our future fleets, both domestic and international.”

The three-month programme, arranged by Vertellus and its East Midlands-based partner, RH Commercial Vehicles, is based on usage, with customers contracting a minimum of 3,000 kWh per month – equivalent to circa 40,000km (24,850 miles) per annum.

Nigel Baxter, managing director of Vertellus, said: “We are very proud to announce this major milestone in our company’s history and believe that it is another significant step in further assisting the UK transportation sector’s goal of reaching its net-zero emission targets.

“The EV Discovery Programme was created to offer operators with a unique opportunity to better understand how electric vehicles could be utilised within the business and we are delighted that our first customer is one of the most forward-thinking logistics operators in the UK.

“We look forward to helping the team at Europa Road further enhance the company’s decarbonisation journey.”  

Vertellus, which has a portfolio of more than 3,500 long haul, construction and distribution vehicles across the HGV and LCV range from 2.7t up to 44t, launched last year.