Parcel delivery firm DPD has confirmed that it is now providing an all-electric delivery service to 10 UK towns and cities and is aiming for 30 all-electric locations by the end of 2023.
According to DPD, this is five more than originally planned and two years earlier than expected. In October 2020, the company announced plans to create 25 all-electric towns and cities in the UK by 2025.
In July 2021, Oxford became DPD’s first ‘green’ city, with a fleet of 40 EVs based at the DPD’s Bicester eco-depot, delivering over 15,000 parcels a week across the city.
DPD has now confirmed that nine additional UK locations have achieved the same all-electric delivery status. The 10 towns and cities are Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Hull, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Stoke.
According to DPD, progress is underway at the remaining 15 original green delivery locations – Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Cambridge, Coventry, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Sheffield – and it expects these locations to achieve all-electric status two years earlier than planned, by the end of next year.
In addition, the firm is now planning for five more towns – Birkenhead, Gateshead, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Rotherham and Shipley – to become all-electric by the end of 2023.
Read more: DPD to roll out air-quality monitoring across six UK cities
To-date, DPD has invested over £90m on EVs in the UK, including the most recent order of 1,000 Ford E-Transit vans in May 2022, which will take DPD’s EV fleet to over 2,500 in total.
The company, which hasn’t bought a diesel van since summer 2020, said it expects to deliver 26 million parcels this year using EVs, a saving of 7,200,000kg of CO2.
Elaine Kerr, DPD UK CEO, said: “One of our big aims is to be the UK’s most sustainable delivery company and by the end of 2023, we will have over 5,000 EVs on the road and 30 urban centres delivered on all-electric vehicles.
“Since opening the UK’s first all-electric parcel depot in Westminster in 2018, we have grown our electric fleet year on year, despite some of the issues that have held us back, such as the lack of righthand drive EVs for the UK market.
“We are now seeing improved availability of larger electric vans, which is what we need. As a result, it is fantastic to be able to extend our original pledge to 30 locations and two years earlier than planned.
“By targeting major town and city centres with our electric vehicles, we can make a significant difference to emissions in those locations and help improve air quality where it is most needed.
“In addition to buying the vehicles, and investing in charging infrastructure, we continue to optimise our routing and operation, to create the smartest possible delivery system and reduce our overall miles per parcel.”
