What Van? Britain's biggest and best van buyers' guide

As one of the UK’s largest van fleet operators, Northgate Vehicle Hire is committed to helping its customers achieve sustainable operation and to provide them with support in reducing carbon output. Offering current and potential customers assistance in their journey to fleet electrification, the newly expanded EV advice and consultancy team carry out a whole life cost analysis of any vehicles being considered, ensuring that expectations and needs are both met. Prior to commitment, Northgate will submit trial vehicles for test and evaluation.

This year saw Northgate roll out its ‘Drive to Zero’ programme. Proving to be hugely successful, this customer -focused suite of solutions is designed to assist the transition to electrification of LCV fleets, made credible by the fact that Northgate’s EV journey has been made via the same path.  Currently, the capabilities of electric LCV’s are not compatible with absolutely every operator, so Northgate makes an initial analysis assessing the suitability of the businesses operation to electric LCV’s. Northgate builds a full understanding of vehicles, their movements, the distances travelled and journey times, then highlights which vans would be candidates for switching to electric power and suggesting others which may need to wait for vehicles with higher ranges to become available. A recent TrustPilot customer review states: “Going green gave us a massive cost saving, especially after the pandemic. Northgate played a massive part by being very helpful with meetings, advice, and welcoming people.” 

The roadmap to a fully electric LCV vehicle parc is full of obstacles, no more so than the charging infrastructure, the provisioning of which is a potential minefield of regulatory and cost efficiency hurdles. Embracing the issue, Northgate Vehicle Hire acquired ChargedEV in 2021 in order to provide an expert, in-house consultancy service for its clients. The company now boasts 30 installation technicians, able to install any chosen infrastructure on a national level. ChargedEV ensures that customers have access to any possible funding assistance toward workplace installations, including the OLEV Workplace Charging Scheme. Customers requiring larger installations can benefit from up to £14,000 of cost savings.

Northgate is setting an example to its customers by installing state of the art EV charging facilities at some of its own branches. With an internal commitment to be able to fully service an EV fleet by the end of 2023, Northgate’s fleet management solution means that electric fleet operators can utilise the company’s facilities and its fully-trained technicians irrespective of how the vehicles had been acquired.