Woolies has placed a significant order for electric delivery trucks with two Chinese brands as the supermarket giant attempts to make up ground on its quest for a zero emission home delivery fleet .
The company has placed orders for 22 Foton T5 light duty electric trucks and five LDV Delivery 9 electric vans
The order flagged last week by Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci is part of the company’s quest to have a completely zero emission delivery fleet by 2030.
In announcing the latest order and the company’s plans Banducci said that he hopes other organisations will follow Woolworths and also moved to electric trucks, but said the job of scaling up commercial electric fleets was not easy.
The company will see the 27 new electric delivery trucks take to Sydney over the next months, which it says is the first stage of its larger plan to convert its entire fleet by 2030, which it said was part of its plan to achieve a target of adding 1000 electric trucks to Australian roads and to reduce transport emissions by 60 per cent int he next seven years.
The first vehicles will operate from Woolworths’ fulfilment centres in Mascot and Caringbah in southern Sydney, where it has also installed new charging stations to service the new vehicles.
The Woolworths boss said the company has been discussing the move to electric trucks for the past four years.and has operated two SEA Electric trucks for the last two years.
Banducci conceded that the fledgling 27 vehicles electric fleet Woolworths is launching is only a small start but said it emphasised just how far Australia needs to go as a country.
“You really get to see the challenges writ large when you try to scale it up,” Banducci told the media.
