Banking on electriciti in the Citi
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You probably wouldn't expect to find threl wheeled electric vans inside the imposinc portals of the Bankers' Clearing House. BL you'd be wrong and, as David Wilcox explains, they're not at all overawed by their auspicious surroundings
PROBLEM: to run a transport service where the vehicles are rarely more than two miles from base and cover less than 20 miles a day, but all within possibly the most congested streets in the country, the City of London.
This is the unenviable position of the Bankers' Clearing House in Lombard Street in the heart of the City.
The Bankers' Clearing House runs a service for the clearing banks — the High Street banks to you and me — whereby it acts as an exchange centre for cheques. For instanee, if you are paid a sumof money on a cheque of Bank A and you pay it into your account with Bank B, the cheque will then physically have to return to Bank A.
So your local branch of Bank B sends the cheque internally (along with a few thousand others) to its clearing department in the City of London and the Bankers' Clearing House vehicles move it across the City to the Exchange Centre in Lombard Street where it is collected by Bank A, again using the Bankers' Clearing House vehicles.
Back at the Bank A clearing department the details on the heque are electronically 3canned and then sorted accordingly before being despatched to Bank A's branches for payment.
This is obviously a very impor:ant task and the Bankers' Clearng House needs vehicles that 3 re capable of providing an effi:flent and reliable shuttle service 'nom each of the banks' clearing Jepartments through the City's Thoked and narrow streets to the Exchange Centre and back again.
The man who was primarily -esponsible for specifying the iehicles for this unique operaion is chief inspector at the 3ankers' Clearing House Sinclair /ea'.
He told me that until 1968 the )1dest form of transport known o man was used; men walked to ind from the Exchange Centre, aulling trollies loaded with sacks :ontaining the bundles of cheTues. This simple and reliable nethod had to end for a number )f reasons, but primarily be:ause the volume of cheques be
ing handled had risen so rapidly that men on foot couldn't cope.
So, in 1968 the Bankers' Clearing House bought some small three-wheeled electric vans. They were manoeuvrable, could travel at 8mph and accommodate about half a ton payload. This was carried on three racked trollies, each holding 20 boxes of cheques with up to 3,500 cheques in each box. The three trollies were wheeled straight into the van from the loading bank, giving the van a potential capacity of 210,000 cheques.
This first generation of electric vans worked well, but as they came towards the end of their working life ten years later in 1978, Sinclair Veal told me that he needed vehicles that were both larger and faster.
The number of cheques passing through the centre had increased and the advent of electronic scanning and sorting of cheques meant that the movement of the cheques into and out of the Exchange Centre just had to be faster to keep up. And new clearing departments were on the outskirts of the City, so the distances were greater.
Sinclair Veal was still convinced that electric vehicles offered the best solution. "The vans have to run right into the Exchange Centre and the banks' clearing departments, so if we used petrol-engined vehicles we would need fume extraction equipment and things such as double air-lock doors. And petrol-engined vans just wouldn't last in the heavy City traffic, never getting a run out. They would get choked-up and the clutches and gearboxes would wear too quickly."
Electric vans get round all these problems and after consideration Sinclair Veal went to Harbilt Electric Vehicles of Market Harborough. Harbilt specialises in what it calls "horizontal movement". In other words, it doesn't make forklift trucks but concentrates on electric vehicles that go places, ranging from pedestriancontrolled carts through tugs and tractors such as you see at airports and stations to small road vehicles.
The Bankers' Clearing House chose the Harbilt 406 model as the basis of the new van design. This met the basic requirements; it was faster with a top speed of 16mph and had a greater payload capacity — 1.25 tonnes.
It is just under lift long overall and has a steel section and plate chassis. The heavy-duty 48V motor is mounted low under the floor right in the centre of the chassis. Either side of it, midway between the front and rear axles, are the two banks of batteries. A conventional propshaft carries the drive to the rear wheels.
Sinclair Veal specified the type of body to be fitted and chose a very simple square body made out of flat aluminium panels on a square section steel frame with a roller-shutter rear door.
The design was deliberately kept simple to give a practical shape and to allow the Exchange Centre to do its own body repairs — the aluminium panel is simply removed and a new one cut, riveted on, and then resprayed. There are of course no rust problems with aluminium, either.
The dimensions of the body were designed to accommodate four, rather than three of the original wheeled trollies, thus raising the van's capacity to 280,000 cheques. With the fleet of 24 Harbilts, the Bankers' Clearing House handles roughly six million cheques each day (which I am reliably informed is equal to six Post Office Towers if the cheques are piled one on top of another).
The controls of the Harbilt 406 are simplicity itself. There is an ignition key to turn it on, a simple forward-backward stick on the dashboard for direction of travel and an accelerator. Brakes are hydraulic with a mechanical handbrake. The more sophisticated regenerative braking is offered by Harbilt as an option, but Sinclair Veal felt it was not necessary for his use.
Other switches on the dashboard cover the minor functions such as lights, wiper and washer, while the indicators and light dipswitch are on the steering column. Beside the driver's seat is the battery recharging plug. Access to the batteries themselves for topping-up is via two lift up panels in the wooden floor of the van body.
Without being startling, performance is adequate for the narrow City streets, with speed and acceleration not greatly affected by the payload. (For applications where greater speed is required, Harbilt does in fact make a 412 version with a top speed of 33 mph and a reduced payload of 0.4 tonne).
But more importantly, reliability has been good and in Sinclair Veal's view better than a comparable petrol-engined van. He attributes this mainly to the simplicity of an electric van: "There is no clutch, no gearbox in the normal sense of the word, and no engine to get choked up in traffic, so there's very little to go wrong."
Minor repairs are carried out at the Exchange Centre, but Harbilt service engineers will come down from Market Harborough in the event of anything more serious. The only notable fault that Sinclair Veal could recall was the failure of the "black box" speed control unit.
Battery life depends on usage and care. They are guaranteed for four years, and Harbilt reports that the national average is five and a half years. Those in the Bankers' Clearing House vans are carefully maintained and Mr Veal told me that they generally last around seven or eight years. This is important since a new set of the heavy duty batteries costs E1,480.
The range of the Harbilt 406 on one charge is 50 miles. Most of the Exchange Centre vans do four round trips between the banks' clearing departments and the Exchange Centre each day, covering a total of just 15 or so miles. So they are charged either every night or every other night.
The chargers are at the banks' clearing departments and the banks are responsible for recharging the batteries and providing the drivers. Though several vans are allocated to each of the five clearing banks' cleering departments, the vans are rotated from time to time to even out wear and all are painted in the light grey Bankers' Clearing House livery.
Bigger, faster and more refined, the new Harbilt vans are superior to the old three-wheelers in all but one aspect — man oeuvra bi I ity. Obviously, E larger four-wheeled van cannoi hope to match a small three. wheeler in turning circle and this caused problems in the smal enclosed loading bar area in thE Exchange Centre at Lombarc Street.
There are ten bays marked oubut it is difficult to turn the van; round in such a small area anc reversing in the street outside not safe.
To get over this problem, Sin clair Veal has had an electri. turntable installed in the loadini area so that the vehicle is effecti vely turned in its own length.
When comparing the initie cost of electric vans with that o comparable petrol-engine. vehicles, the electrics seem ex pensive. The Harbilt 406 corn plete with body as supplied t. the Bankers' Clearing House is the region of £8,000 includin. batteries and charger.
But the pence per mile operai ing costs of electrics is considei ably lower, reliability is superia and maintenance costs less.
Though the Bankers' Clearin House does have a thoroug inspection and maintenanc procedure, there is in fact n MoT for electric vehicles (as Ion as they are not over 1,525kg ur laden) and also no road fund ta to pay — a worthwhile saving.
The life expectancy of th electric vans is also better tha that of petrol-engined versior in the same City environmen and Sinclair Veal is looking for least ten years use from the Ha bilts.