Telecoms and broadband giant BT Group (inc. Openreach) has today announced the “UK’s largest ever commercial Electric Vehicle (EV) fleet order“, which will see them purchasing around 3,500 new EVs and thus expanding their EV fleet to nearly 8,000 by the time the order is complete in 2026.
The operator, which currently manages the second-largest commercial vehicle fleet in the UK (i.e. more than 27,000 vehicles are used by their engineers across the country), already has around 4,300 electric vehicles, and they’re aiming to upgrade their entire fleet of diesel-powered vans and cars to EVs by the end of March 2031 (supporting their Net Zero target for the same date).
The order of the new EVs is part of a larger delivery of 6,000 new vehicles, with more than half of the vans being EVs. All of this will be delivered by four manufacturers over the next two years: Ford, Stellantis, Toyota, and Renault (BT and Openreach have previously also purchased some EVs from Vauxhall).
By the end of FY24, the BT Group had already achieved a 61% reduction in its carbon emissions intensity since FY17. A big contributor to this performance has been the move to more energy-efficient full fibre (FTTP) broadband and 4G / 5G mobile networks, while switching off old legacy networks (e.g. 3G and analogue phone).
Simon Lowth, Chief Financial Officer at BT Group, said:
“By integrating yet more electric vehicles into our operations, we are taking another significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint and supporting the UK’s transition to a greener future. As we extend our full fibre build from 16 million homes and businesses today to 25 million by the end of 2026, having the most efficient, sustainable electric vehicles will give our engineers the edge as they connect customers at pace to our next generation networks. Our modern fleet will help us to be more efficient and deliver a better service for our customers.”
Lilian Greenwood, Future of Roads Minister, said:
“Businesses have a crucial role to play in driving the transition to electric cars and vans. That’s why it’s fantastic to see that BT have made the most of our plug-in van grant to order 3,500 brand new EVs – which means they will have the largest electric commercial fleet in the UK.
“We want to help more businesses decarbonise their operations, and we’ve extended our plug-in van grant with £120 million funding to help roll out more zero emission vans on our roads – part of our £2.3 billion to support industry and consumers switch to EVs and make the transition a success”.
Sadly, BT’s announcement doesn’t contain any details on precisely which models the operator has ordered or how much range each of them will have. Last year we also reported that Openreach had teamed up with ‘Ground Control’ to install an initial 8,500 charging points for Openreach. Many of those will be installed outside engineer’s homes and at key sites, such as exchanges, up and down the country. The broadband network operator is also working with other operators, like First Bus, to share charging infrastructure (here).
Finally, BT’s awkwardly named UK digital incubation team, Etc., last year “powered up” their first Electric Vehicle (EV) charger under a 2-year pilot, which is one of potentially tens of thousands that could be established by repurposing Openreach’s old fixed broadband street cabinets (here) – these can be used by both residents and Openreach’s engineers. The first such conversion went live in Scotland, but the pilot itself is focused on West Yorkshire, with ambitions to scale up to 600 trial sites across the UK.