Electric cargo bike biz partners Ford e-scooter rental biz for fleet support
Electric cargo bike biz EAV has adapted one of its light electric vehicles to assist Ford Motor Company’s electric scooter arm – Spin – with its fleet management.
Currently in production, the adapted vehicles will first be deployed in Essex in the weeks to come as part of a trial that will be expanded alongside Spin and Basildon Council over the summer.
The adapted EAV 2Cubed vehicle is a four wheel electric cargo bike that has had its storage tailored to be well suited to battery replenishment and rebalancing of on street scooter fleets. The vehicle is permitted to travel both on the road and in cycle lanes as it falls within the legislation governing electric bikes.
Other iterations of the firm’s work have been trialled with supermarkets like Asda as part of a drive to improve last mile delivery efficiency. Such vehicles have been demonstrated to offer a compelling urban efficiency and even cost saving versus traditional vehicles.
Anthony Jackson, UK General Manager at Spin said: “We needed it to be able to carry spare batteries, tools, replacement parts and have space to recover or swap out our e-scooters. It had to be zero emissions, lightweight, easy to operate and as environmentally focused as possible. We’ve known EAV for some time and the 2Cubed was the logical choice, we just needed EAV to convert the rear pod for our specific purpose and that’s exactly what they’ve done with the 2Charge.”
“At the heart of EAV, we’re a product design, development and production company and this challenge from Ford and Spin fitted our capabilities perfectly,” added Barmby. “The whole EAV2Cubed concept is designed down from a van, not up from a bike and that also applies to the rear box. We’re essentially an ultra-lightweight van so we were able to adapt the load space to Spin’s exact requirements. We see this project as supporting e-scooters and other forms of micro-mobility as it’s a future we both need and really believe in.”
Among other notable examples in the bike biz, logistics firm DHL is now putting cargo bikes to use in Europe, while back in the UK InterCity RailFreight has been able to expand its same-day delivery services with the help of electric cargo bikes linked to its rail hubs.
