Tesco will soon start using fully-electric vehicles to serve its distribution centre in Wales, thereby becoming the first in the UK to commercially use electric heavy good vehicles (HGV).
Two 37-tonne lorries will transport goods from a rail freight terminal in Cardiff to the company’s hub in Magor, about 30 miles away, from January, stated reports today (29).
The vehicles can travel about 100 miles on a single charge, making the relatively short distance of the round trip an ideal route to test how further vehicles could be rolled out in the fleet, Britain’s biggest supermarket said.
The first two, from the Dutch manufacturer DAF, are expected to make about 65,000 miles of haulage journeys otherwise made by diesel vehicles, cutting an estimated 87.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.
Jason Tarry, the chief executive of Tesco in the UK and Ireland, said starting to convert its distribution network, one of the largest in the UK, would play an important role in the supermarket’s efforts to become net zero by 2035.
Britain became the first country to commit to making all new goods vehicles weighing 26 tonnes and under zero-emission by 2035 at the Cop26 climate summit last month.
Smaller electric lorries have gone on sale in the UK, and 20 are taking part in Department for Transport trials with the NHS and local authorities.
HGVs contribute about 16 per cent of all emissions from UK transport, the sector that now contributes most to greenhouse gases.
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