The Cologne-Mobil project was launched in Cologne on Monday with Smith Electric Vehicles providing 10 of its Edison electric vans to Ford of Europe to assist with the trial.
The Smith Edison is a pure electric version of the Ford Transit van that is powered by lithium-ion batteries. In urban operations it delivers a range of up to 100miles on a full charge and it boasts a top speed of 50mph.
The company has been producing the van with Ford since 2007 and as part of this latest project will build seven Edison panel vans for delivery services companies, as well as two Edison minibuses for shuttle services and an Edison chassis cab for municipal use.
The aim of the initiative is to research the impact of electric vans and cars on urban air quality, as well as electricity supply infrastructure and their effects on traffic safety. The plan is for scientists to scale up results and examine the true benefits of an electric future for the German city. It is expected that the results of the trial could impact Germany’s efforts to deploy one million zero emission vehicles by 2020.
Ford will supply the final vehicles to clients and will also deploy several Ford Focus battery electric vehicle passenger cars at a later point. It is one of four partners involved in the project that is partly funded by the German government – other members are utility company RheinEnergie AG, the University of Duisburg-Essen and the city of Cologne.
