British Gas has ordered 1,000 e-vans from Vauxhall as part of the largest electric vehicle order for a commercial fleet in the UK.

The Centrica-owned utilities giant, which has the third largest commercial fleet of vehicles in the country, has committed to a fully electrified fleet by 2030.

The Vivaro battery electric vans will arrive in the course of the next 12 months and will be rolled out nationwide across the British Gas engineer workforce.

Centrica said it will be making further orders with Vauxhall for electric vehicles as soon as they are available.

The engineers who receive the new vans will be chosen from volunteers, but also targeting areas where it is important to lower emissions and where a van already needs replacing.

British Gas engineers will install the chargers for the e-vehicles at engineers’ homes. The company is currently up-skilling engineers in EV charging and is accelerating adoption for homes and businesses with charger installs and EV tariffs.

Matthew Bateman, managing director of British Gas, said: “Our engineers and their vans are part of the local community they serve and it’s important we reduce the emissions of our vans so that we are contributing towards better air quality in their area and the environment - we are committed to the transition to electric vehicles which involves changing our fleet as well as helping consumers and businesses with charge points and infrastructure.


He added: “We chose to work with Vauxhall as they were able to give us a large number of high-quality and low emission vans to help us effectively serve our customers – and they will also work with us on future EV solutions.”

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