Plugged in
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I didn't have to wait long for a response to my question — in this column on April 12— about whether any UK company was exploiting the possibility of electric vehicles in the USA. Ken Fletcher, press officer of Harbilt Electric, was back in a flash to tell us (as reported in CM last week) that his company had recently supplied 30 battery-electric mailvans for use in Cupertino, neat San Jose, California. And Harbilt got the order in competition with an American vehicle after operational trials lasting a year.
In the words of the transport controller for the Western Region of the US Postal Service, the British vehicle had "proven technology, far in advance of America in this field". Now there is talk of US Postal Service eventually replacing its mail delivery vans with electrics at a rate of 5,000 vehicles a year. Not all British, maybe, but opportunity knocks.