Electric Avenue

When Fair Food launched in 2010 we were super-keen to go down the electric delivery avenue.

In our minds we imagined it would only be a few years before we had a fleet of electric vans delivering local organic food all over Melbourne.

We had in our corner the CERES’ Electric Car Project team.

Fresh from successfully converting two Citroën Berlingo vans, the next project was an ambitious conversion of a large Mercedes Sprinter van into an EV.

After a year of painstaking welding and wiring, there was a snag – the team couldn’t get the new electric motor and cutting edge computer control system to talk to each other.

Trying every possible workaround, the team reluctantly abandoned the van when the project funding ran out.

After so much effort and hard work it was a crushing blow.

In 2012 the Nissan Leaf, Australia’s first mainstream electric vehicle, went on sale, over the next couple of years it was followed by EVs from Mitsubishi, Tesla, BMW and even an experimental electric Holden Commodore.

Everyone was getting excited about the EV transition, it was only a matter of time, the only thing was no one was making electric delivery vans.

Finally in 2018 we found a company in Dandenong installing electric drive trains into Chinese-made van bodies.

They were expensive but we worked out we could just make the numbers work.

After a test drive we were sold, but a fall in the Australian dollar triggered a $20,000 price hike and they were suddenly beyond our reach.

Our hopes rose briefly in 2019 when the LDV EV80, a well-reviewed Chinese electric van, was released in New Zealand. Excited, we called LDV who told us they weren’t coming to Australia.

Unfortunately the Morrison government’s policy of saving the weekend from electric vehicles had resulted in car companies sending very few models here.

A further period of resignation followed until in October 2021 Ford Australia announced the launch of its e-Transit van.

Everything about it was right – the size, the range, the charging network, the dealer support.

In December 2021 Jesse Hull, Fair Food’s Logistics Manager, rang Jim at Essendon Ford and put down deposits on the first two new e-Transits to arrive in Australia.

We were finally on track!

But then in February 2022 Vladimir Putin launched his Special Operation into Ukraine.

With wiring looms from its Ukrainian suppliers unavailable, Ford Australia announced a three month delay on the e-Transit’s arrival. The delay turned into six months, then one year and then two years.

Our EV spirits fell to a new low, until a tip-off led us to The Good Car Co in Hobart.

A start-up founded by friends frustrated by the lack of EVs available in Australia, The Good Car Co offered to import a Peugeot e-Expert electric van from the UK.

We put a deposit down and waited.

After a few weeks on a ship, a few weeks in customs, another few weeks looking for a missing key and the usual registration rigmarole, the van finally arrived.

Fair Food’s drivers fell in love with the e-Expert. Until it broke down and we discovered nobody in Melbourne knew anything about fixing them.

It turned out an onboard charging unit had failed – a months-long wait for the new part to arrive from France followed. It would fail again soon after.

Over the next three years we watched on as new electric vans were released all around the world but not in Australia.

Then one day while walking around an electric vehicle show Jesse wandered onto the Ford stand and saw there before him the e-Transit we had put a deposit on back in 2021. 

With the help of an interest-free loan from CORENA – the Citizens Own Renewable Energy Network Australia – we finally found the electric van we had been waiting for.

Last month, alongside our friends from CORENA, we launched the new e-Transit complete with fancy stickers and super-efficient F-gas and PFAS-free refrigeration system at the Fair Food warehouse.

Sixteen years of false starts, dead-ends, political turmoil and financial curve balls and we’re making progress.

This week we put another five e-Transits on order to replace our remaining fleet of diesel vans.

We’ll keep you posted as news comes to hand.

Have a great week

Chris