Royal Mail is going green with the unveiling of nine new electric vans to distribute post from the central London depot.
The vans can travel up to 100 miles on one charge and were produced by Oxfordshire-based carmaker Arrival.
Another batch of 100 electric vans for Royal Mail has also been ordered from Peugeot and will enter service in December.
The vehicles come in sizes of three and a half, six and seven and a half tonnes.
The prototype versions of the vans have wing mirrors however a spokeswoman for Arrival told the BBC these won’t be included in the final design. Instead cameras will be used to monitor traffic to the rear.
“We will be putting them through their paces over the next several months to see how they cope with the mail collection demands from our larger sites,” said Paul Gatti, Royal Mail Fleet’s managing director.
Royal Mail’s fleet comprises about 49,000 vehicles in total.
“European postal providers, starting with DHL in Germany, have been taking this approach for a while now,” said Ananth Srinivasan, a mobility expert with research consultancy Frost & Sullivan.
He estimates that five countries – the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – also have the potential to turn large percentages of their fleets electric in the coming years.
“Our research indicates that by 2025 these countries may have 100,000 postal service vehicles going electric between them,” he told the BBC.