Groceries from Asda’s Gillingham Pier, Old Kent Road and Sheffield Chaucer stores will now be fulfilled by electric vehicles (EVs), giving over 345,000 households in the store catchment areas access to a greener delivery choice.
The vehicles can run for up to 120 miles per charge, requiring seven hours recharge time. Asda estimates that using these EVs will save over 400,000 CO2 (kg) per year.
Customers in Cardiff Bay and Leith will also soon be able to have their groceries delivered by a fully electric fleet as the retailer has committed to turning a further two stores electric by the end of the year.
The move represents the first stage of Asda’s ambition to completely remove diesel vehicles from its grocery home delivery fleet by 2028. These plans are part of the retailer’s wider strategy to half its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of its Courtauld commitments.
Asda, senior vice president of ecommerce, Simon Gregg, said: “Using electric rather than diesel delivery vehicles will lead to huge reductions in our emissions and go a long way to achieve our goals of halving our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon net zero by 2040.
“We are really excited that we are now able to make all deliveries from three stores entirely electric and we’ll be closely monitoring performance of the vans to learn and evolve our approach for future.”
The news comes after Asda announced that it has begun the UK’s largest autonomous grocery home shopping delivery trial in partnership with Wayve.
The year-long trial will give the supermarket the ability to autonomously deliver groceries to a catchment area of over 170,000 residents across 72,000 households in London. The Wayve self-driving vehicles have joined Asda’s existing online delivery operation at the Park Royal superstore in West London and have the capability to drive themselves to customers’ homes.