Electric delivery vehicles are now in place at three Asda stores, with two more shops set to gain the service in the coming months.
Asda’s Gillingham Pier, Old Kent Road, and Sheffield Chaucer stores are now fulfilling online orders using electric delivery vehicles, as the first stage of the supermarket chain’s plan to remove diesel transportation from its e-commerce service by 2028 comes into play.
By the end of 2023, Cardiff Bay and Leith Asda stores will also deliver groceries to people’s homes using a fully electric fleet.
According to the grocer, the electric delivery vehicles can run for up to 120 miles per charge, and they requite seven hours recharge time. The business expects to save more than 400,000 CO2 (kg) per year as a result of introducing these new vehicles to its network.
Senior vice president of e-commerce at Asda, Simon Gregg, commented: “Using electric rather than diesel delivery vehicles will lead to huge reductions in our emissions and go a long way to achieve our goals of halving our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon net zero by 2040.
“We are really excited that we are now able to make all deliveries from three stores entirely electric and we’ll be closely monitoring performance of the vans to learn and evolve our approach for future.”
In July 2021, Asda promised that its fleet of staff vehicles will consist only of electric company cars by 2025.
The move away from diesel to fully electric is expected to remove 2,411 tonnes of CO2 from the retailer’s operations over the four-year period.
Some 85% of Asda staff who opted for a company car in 2020-21 as part of their benefits package chose electric, highlighting the demand for such vehicles across its workforce. The retailer promised petrol and diesel vehicles would not be part if its fleet by 2025.
[Image credit: Green Retail World]
