Smith Electric Vehicles Provides 10 Electric Vans to Ford of Europe for German Trials

Washington, UK, February 22, 2010 – Smith Electric Vehicles is providing a fleet of vans for a new project aiming to shape Germany's low carbon future.

Smith is supplying 10 Edison vans to Ford of Europe, which is a partner in the colognE-mobil project in Cologne, launched today (FEB 22nd).

The first phase of the project will examine the potential benefits of electric commercial vehicles in Cologne, then forecast how they could impact on Germany's plans to deploy 1million zero emission vehicles by 2020.

Kevin Harkin, Sales Director for Smith Electric Vehicles, said: "We are delighted to be supporting Ford of Europe in this project.

"We believe that commercial electric vehicles have a major role to play in low carbon transport and are confident this research project will reach the same conclusions."

The Smith Edison is a pure electric version of the Ford Transit van that is powered by leading edge lithium-ion batteries. Designed for urban operations, the vehicle delivers a range of up to 100 miles (160km) on a full charge and a top speed of 50mph (80km/h) Smith has produced Edison in collaboration with Ford since 2007.

For this project, Smith will build seven Edison panel vans for delivery service companies, two Edison minibuses for passenger shuttle services and one Edison chassis cab for municipal use in the City of Cologne.

Ford of Europe will deliver the final vehicles to all these clients and is responsible for their technical maintenance and service during the project. Ford will also deploy a number of Ford Focus BEV electric passenger cars later in the project.


The initiative will research the impact of electric vans and cars on urban air quality, traffic safety and electricity supply infrastructure. Scientists will then scale up the results to examine the true benefits an electric future could deliver for the German city.

Ford is one of four partners in the colognE-mobil project. The others are utility company RheinEnergie AG, the City of Cologne and the University of Duisburg-Essen.

The colognE-mobil project is partly funded by the German government and coordinated by the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Government's National Development Plan for Electric Mobility aims to get 1m electric vehicles on German roads by 2020.